Représenter l'invention : Étude de l'évolution du dessin d'objet technique en Angleterre (ca. 1750-1850)

This thesis focuses on English invention drawings between 1750 and 1850. These visual documents offer a perspective on a technical aesthetic linked to the rise of English machinery at the turn of the 19th century. In this work, I focus on two specific corpora: 18th and 19th centuries English patents and the archives of the Society of Arts. I argue that technical objects have an aesthetic that captures both the relationship between materiality and sensibility, and their political role. Their analysis allows me to understand the context in which they were produced, the evolution of their styles, and their different uses outside their original institutions. In this research, I propose to 'open the black box' of these drawings by investigating successively their graphic, social, and political dimensions. First, I consider the materiality and state of conservation of these documents, as well as the identity of their producers, whether they were inventors or professional technical draughtsmen. Secondly, insofar as the latter were not artists in the classical meaning of the fine arts, I look at the aesthetic they produced, focusing on some graphic features such as perspective and shading. My aim is to understand how these characteristics helped to define a form of aesthetic that is specific to the technology. For instance, the study of shades allows me to question the dichotomy often established between two categories of figuration - 'naturalism' and 'schematism' - by reintegrating them into a continuous spectrum of representation, of which these two forms constitute the two extremes. This study of a techno-aesthetic also leads me to question the political dimension of the drawings. I consider that this form of aesthetics plays a role outside the institutions that produced the drawings, for example in the legal system, by linking law and technology, or with the public, by influencing its ability to appropriate technical knowledge. This thesis therefore considers invention drawings not just as plates representing technical objects, but as vectors of a political technology.