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Bell & Howell Information and Learning: Greek characters omitted. (...)
Quoi! vous avez une nation entiere pour levier, la raison pour point d'appui, et vous n'avez pas encore bouleverse le monde!
["What! You have an entire nation for a lever, reason for a fulcrum, and you have not yet overturned the world!"]
-Georges Danton, le Moniteur, session of March IO, 1793'
For the course in mechanics (then called "Mechanique"), the following materials were supplied: . . . a machine for studying central forces; an inclined plane; a machine for studying vibrating cords; a reflexion apparatus; an Archimedean screw; a Bullinger globe (sic, still mentioned in 1807 under Glassware) [probably the terrestrial globe of Louis Boulengier, 1518, according to Margaret Bradley's notes]; levers; tribometers for measuring friction; and a lever balance for demonstrating pulleys.... For Geographie and Astronomie, various globes were taken, and a small model of the Copernican system was made by Fortin.
-list of materials requisitioned in 1794-95 for the Ecole centrale des travaux publics, from Margaret Bradley, "The Facilities for Practical Instruction in Science during the Early Years of the Ecole Polytechnique"2
There were no honorary members [in the National Institute of Sciences and Arts established in 1795], though concessions to political expediency occurred. A prominent example was the election of General Napoleon Bonaparte in 1797, after the Italian Campaign, to the "Mechanics" section of the First Class.
-Martin S. Straum, "Science and Government in the French Revolution"3
A Throne the ... ... ... ["Give me a fulcrum (and I will move the world)"] of Archimedes-Poet Bonaparte-Layer out of a World-- garden
-Samuel Taylor Coleridge, unpublished memorandum, I8024
ACCORDING TO BRONISLAW BACZKO, THE WORD "REACTION" AND ITS French derivatives, "reacteur" and "reactionnaire," first entered the political vocabulary at the end of the Thermidorian period and were used to describe a counteraction, a movement in response to another movement.5 Baczko further notes that two other words, "revolution" and "progress," were earlier borrowed from scientific discourse to describe politico-historical events.6 Baczko's association of the Thermidorian raid on the contemporary scientific vocabulary with such previous events would seem to suggest that the language of mechanical physics was always fertile ground for newly emerging political concepts and that the Thermidorian appropriation of "reaction" is of anecdotal interest...