History of technology. Vol. 31 - Ian Inkster

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.