THE WEALTH OF KNOWLEDGE^283
branches: chemicals in Lyons, watchmaking in Besançon, textiles in
Mulhouse. Some of this aimed to make up for the disappearance of the
older apprenticeship system. Finally, such older technical institutions as
the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers—a museum to start—took to
giving courses, often directed to adults who had passed beyond the
normal sequence but wanted to bring themselves up to date.
The French initiatives were a beacon to countries farther east. The
Polytechnique in particular sparked emulation in Prague, Vienna,
Zurich, places as far off as Moscow. In addition, each country had its
own combination of associated schools. The Germans, for example, de
veloped a network of trade schools (Gewerbeschulen) that fed middle
technological management; and a growing array of technical higher
schools (technische Hochschulen)—the first in Karlsruhe in 1825—that
taught at university level and formed generations of chemists and en
gineers. Finally, the Germans pushed scientific instruction and research
in the universities. This was the cutting edge of experiment and inquiry,
and the invention of the teaching laboratory (Justus Liebig, 1830s)
capped an educational system that became by the end of the century
the world's envy and model.
The reliance on formal education for the diffusion of technical and
scientific knowledge had momentous consequences. First, it almost al
ways entailed instruction in abstract and theoretical matters that lent
themselves to a variety of applications, old and new. I would empha
size the new. Secondly, it opened the way to new branches of knowl
edge of great economic potential.
Compare such schooling with the British strategy of learning by
doing—the strategy that had driven the Industrial Revolution. This had
worked well enough so long as technology remained an accretion of
improvements and invention a recombination of known techniques.
(Even so, one can only marvel at Britain's continuing ability to gener
ate appropriate genius and talent, much of it autodidact. ) But from the
late eighteenth century on, as the frontiers of technological possibility
and inquiry moved outward, exploration went beyond the lessons of
sensory experience.
These new directions found their biggest return in two areas, chem
icals and electricity—in both, thanks to advances in scientific knowl
edge. The older chemical branches remained a kind of industrial
cookery: mix, heat, stir, keep the good and dump the waste. They did
not stand still. They gained especially from mechanization—bigger
and faster kilns, mixers, grinders, and the like—as producers went after
economies of scale. Another source of progress was the invention of