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New work on early modern Europe has now opened up the hidden avenues that link changes of technologies with a complex of cognitive, institutional, spatial and cultural elements. It is true that all divisions of history wish to incorporate all other divisions unto themselves, but in the essays of our first collection there are specific cases and analyses clearly delineated to show how technologies and systems for the production, reproduction and representation of technological changes emerged out of fundamental aspects of European society and mentality. The question must be: How far were such fundamental aspects unique (in their entirety and configuration) to Europe?The second collection on patent agency takes the modern industrialization of Europe as its focus, and illustrates the manner in which systems of intellectual property rights generated manifold agencies that acted to both spread and control the use of knowledge in advanced sites. Patent agency has been generally neglected by historians, one reason for this being the difficulty of defining effective agency beyond the obvious confines of those who were actually trained and remunerated as agents of invention. Informal networks or sites may have been crucial in converting general patent systems into local environs of technical advance.
Sommario
Special Issue: Conceptualising the Production and Diffusion of Useful and Reliable Knowledge in Early Modern Europe \ Introduction - Useful Knowledge Reconsidered, Karel Davids (Amsterdam) \ 1. Trading Zones: Arenas of Exchange during the Late-Medieval/Early Modern Transition to the New Empirical Sciences, Pamela Long (Independent Scholar) \ 2. Gate-Keeping: Who defined useful knowledge in Early Modern times?, Karel Davids (Amsterdam) \ 3. The Circulation of Knowledge in Early Modern Europe: Embodiment, mobility, learning and knowing, Lissa Roberts (Twente) \ 4. Three-Dimensional Models as 'In-Between-Objects': The creation of in-between knowledge in early modern architectural practice, Simona Valerian (LSE) \ 5. Artisans, Operative Skills and Labour Rationalities at the Beginning of the Industrial Revolution, Lilian Perez (University Paris-Diderot) \
Special Issue: Patent Agency in History: Intellectual Property and Technological Change \ Introduction - Patent Agency: Problems and perspectives, Ian Inkster (Wenzao College, Kaohsiung and Nottingham Trent University) \ 6. Patent Agents in the European Periphery: Spain (1826-1902), David Pretel (University of Cambridge) and Patricio Saiz (UAM) \ 7. The Litigations Concerning Renault's Patents at the Beginning of the 20th Century, Gabriel Galvez-Behar (Université Lille 3) \ 8. Highly Fraught with Good to Man: Patent Organisation, Agency, and Useful and Reliable Knowledge in British Machinofacture circa 1780-1851 and Beyond, Ian Inkster (Wenzao College, Kaohsiung and Nottingham Trent University) \ 9. Patent Agents in Britain at the Turn of the 20th Century: Themes and Perspectives, Anna Guagnini (Bologna) \ 10. The Oldest Patent Granted in Mexico and Latin America, Dr. Manuel Márquez (L.L.& M.M. Consultores, SC)
Info autore
Ian Inkster is Research Professor of International History at Nottingham Trent University, UK.
