User:Brayley Starr/Production Controversies

TO OUR PEER REVIEWERS FROM CIV CLASS:

We intend to add the following section to the article on Pascal's calculator as a new part in the History section.

Limits to Distribution and Controversies

Pascal planned to distribute the Pascaline broadly in order to reduce the workload for people who needed to perform laborious arithmetic. Drawing inspiration from his father, a tax commissioner, Pascal hoped to provide a shortcut to hours of number crunching performed by workers in professions such as mathematics, physics, astronomy, etc. But, because of the intricacies of the device, the relationship Pascal had with craftsmen, and the intellectual property laws he influenced, the production of the Pascaline was far more limited than he had envisioned. Only 20 Pascalines were produced over the 10 years following its creation.

Intellectual Property

In 1649, King Louis XIV of France gave Pascal a royal privilege (a precursor to the patent), which provided the exclusive right to design and manufacture calculating machines in France, allowing the Pascaline to be the first calculator sold by a distributor. Pascal feared that craftsmen would not be able to accurately reproduce his Pascaline, which would result in false copies that would ruin his reputation along with the reputation of his machine.In 1645, in order to control the production of his invention, Pascal wrote to Monseigneur Le Chancelier (the chancellor of France, Pierre Séguier) in his letter entitled "La Machine d’arithmétique. Lettre dédicatoire à Monseigneur le Chancelier". Pascal requested that no Pascaline be made without his permission. His ingenuity garnered the respect of King Louis XIV of France who granted his request, but it came at a price; craftsmen were not able to legally experiment with Pascal's design, nor were they able to distribute his machine without his permission/guidance.

The above is an excerpt from Pascal's letter to the Chancellor of France. When translated to English, it states: “The second cause which I foresee capable of giving you umbrage, are (dear reader) the bad copies of this machine which might be produced by the presumption of the craftsmen: on these occasions, I conjure you to carry carefully the spirit of distinction, to keep you from surprise, to distinguish between leprosy and leprosy, and not to judge of the true originals by the imperfect productions of the ignorance and temerity of the workmen”

Social Context of Intellectual Collaboration with Craftsmen

Pascal lived in France during France's Ancien Régime. During his time, craftsmen in Europe increasingly organised into guilds, such as the English clockmakers who formed the Clockmakers guild in 1631, half-way through Pascal's efforts to create the calculator. This affected Pascal’s ability to recruit talent as guilds often reduced the exchange of ideas and trade; sometimes, craftsmen would withhold their labour altogether to rebel against the nobles. Thus Pascal was in a market that had a scarcity of skills and willing workers. Importantly, artisans were not free as intellectuals to create the machine: Gottfried Leibniz, who built upon Pascal's calculator later in the 17th century, had the progress for his machine halted due to his artisan selling the machine's parts for financial solvency.

Pascal’s own conduct led to difficulty in recruiting artisans for his project. This was rooted by his belief that matters of the mind trumped those of the body. Pascal was not alone, as many natural philosophers of his time had a hylomorphic understanding of the inventing process: ideas precede materialisation, as form precedes matter. This naturally led to an emphasis on theoretical purity and an underappreciation for practical work. As Pascal described artisans: “[they] work through groping trial and error, that is, without certain measures and proportions regulated by art, produc[ing] nothing corresponding to what they had sought, or, what’s more, they make a little monster appear, that lacks its principal limbs, the others being deformed, lacking any proportion.”

Pascal operated his project with this hierarchy in mind: he invented and thought, while the artisans simply executed. He hid the theory from artisans, instead promoting that they should simply remember what to do, not necessarily why they should do it, i.e., until "practice has made the rules of theory so common that [the rules] have finally been reduced into art”. This stemmed from his lack of faith in not only the artisanal work process, but in the artisans themselves: “artisans cannot regulate themselves to produce unified machines autonomously."

In contrast, Samuel Morland, one of Pascal's contemporaries also working on creating a calculating machine, likely succeeded because of his ability to manage good relations with his craftsmen. Morland proudly attributed part of his invention to the artisans by name– an odd thing for a nobleman to do for a commoner at the time. Morland was able to recruit the best talent in Europe. His first craftsmen was the famous Peter Blondeau, who had already received protection and recognition from French statesman Richelieu for his contributions in producing coinage for England. Morland's other craftsmen were similarly accomplished: the third, Dutchman John Fromanteel, came a famous Dutch family who pioneered the pendulum clock.

In the end, Pascal succeeded in cementing his name as the sole creator of the Pascaline. The royal patent states that it was his invention exclusively.

Letter from the French Royal allowing Pascal exclusive rights to his invention. This was arguably the first patent.