W.A. Smeaton

Bio: W.A. Smeaton is an academic researcher. The author has an hindex of 1, co-authored 1 publications receiving 13 citations.

Education and Training in the Mining Industry, 1750-1860: European Models and the Italian Case

Abstract: Mining education was one of the areas of technical savoir transformed during the eighteenth century. Mining academies arose and spread through Europe in the second half of that century. This happened first in the German states and the Austrian dominions, due to the cameralistic system, and soon developed elsewhere through a transfer of the German model to France (Ecole des mines) as well as to other francophone and Spanish-speaking areas (Belgium and Piedmont-Savoy, Spain and America). The mining academies may rightly be considered among the prototypes of technical high schools (Polytechniques and Technische Hochschulen) established during the nineteenth century. In the course of exploring some of the details of this development, the present paper aims at suggesting outlines to be followed in pursuing a comparative analysis of special schools for the training of technicians and mining officers (Bergschulen and Bergakademien). A second aim is to examine more closely the Italian case as a typical example of...

Scientific education versus military training: The influence of Napoleon Bonaparte on the Ecole Polytechnique

Abstract: Summary The influence of Napoleon Bonaparte on the Ecole Polytechnique has long been a matter for debate. In this article, the extent of this influence is illustrated, together with resistance within the school itself to Napoleon's attempts to bend it to his own will and use it for purposes of military adventure. Manuscript material, including Napoleon's own private plans for the reorganization of the school, is reproduced to throw light on his intentions and his own attitudes to education.

Early laboratories c.1600 - c.1800 and the location of experimental science.

Abstract: Surprisingly little attention has been given hitherto to the definition of the laboratory. A space has to be specially adapted to deserve that title. It would be easy to assume that the two leading experimental sciences, physics and chemistry, have historically depended in a similar way on access to a laboratory. But while chemistry, through its alchemical ancestry with batteries of stills, had many fully fledged laboratories by the seventeenth century, physics was discovering the value of mathematics. Even experimental physics was content to make use of almost any indoor space, if not outdoors, ignoring the possible value of a laboratory. The development of the physics laboratory had to wait until the nineteenth century.

Foreign Influences in English Universities: Four Case Histories

Abstract: A hundred years ago a perceptive American observed that the English were "more intelligent than many races" and "successfully adopt from [others] what they will, and transform it to their own advantage, thereby creating a new culture."' More recently this view was endorsed by an equally perceptive Englishman who remarked on "the English habit of working through established institutions and modifying them to meet social needs only when such needs are proven."2 Of all the influences to which British Universities have been subjected in the past century and a half, those exerted by French, German, American, and Russian practice have been the most significant in British academic life. Each of them in turn has affected