[CONTENTS.]
| Page. | |
| Polytechnic School at Paris, | [11] |
| Subjects of Instruction as Prescribed for Admission in 1850, | [13] |
| Preparatory Course in the Lycees, | [49] |
| History, Management, Conditions of Admission, Course of Study, Examinational System, and Results, | [55] |
| I. Foundation and History, | [55] |
| Out growth of the Necessities of the Public Service in 1794, | [56] |
| High Scientific Ability of its first Teachers, | [58] |
| Peculiar Method of Scientific Teaching, | [59] |
| Characteristic features of the Répétitorial System, | [59] |
| The Casernement, or Barrack Residence of the Pupils, | [60] |
| Permanent Organization in 1809, | [60] |
| Commission of 1850, | [62] |
| II. Outline of the Plan, Objects, and Management, | [63] |
| Public Services provided for in its General Scientific Course, | [63] |
| Admission by Competition in an Open Examination, | [63] |
| Annual Charge for Board and Instruction, | [64] |
| Exhibitions, (or bourses, demi-bourses,) and Outfits (trousseaux,) | [64] |
| Length of Course of Study, | [64] |
| Number of Professors and Teachers, besides its Military Staff, | [64] |
| Military Establishment, | [65] |
| Civil Establishment, | [65] |
| General Control and Supervision, | [65] |
| 1. Board of Administration, | [65] |
| 2. Board of Discipline, | [65] |
| 3. Board of Instruction, | [65] |
| 4. Board of Improvement, | [66] |
| III. Conditions and Examinations for Admission, | [66] |
| Who may be Candidates for Admission, | [66] |
| Subjects of Entrance Examination, | [66] |
| Preliminary Examination, | [67] |
| Written Examination, | [67] |
| Oral Examination, | [68] |
| Scale of Merit, and Latitude in Amount of Credit given, | [68] |
| Reports of Examiners to Minister of War, | [69] |
| Co-efficients of Influence, varying with the Study and Mode of Examination, | [69] |
| Decision of Jury on all the Documents of each Candidate, | [70] |
| Final Action of the Minister of War, | [70] |
| IV. School Buildings, Course and Method of Study, | [70] |
| Situation, Number, and Purposes of Buildings, | [70] |
| Daily Routine of Exercises, | [72] |
| Method of Teaching and Study, | [73] |
| Professorial and Répétitorial, | [74] |
| Interrogations, Général, | [74] |
| Interrogations, Particulieres by the Répétiteurs, | [74] |
| One Répétiteur to every eight Pupils, | [74] |
| System of Credits for every Lecture, every Interrogation, and Exercise, | [75] |
| Final Admission to Public Service, depends on daily and hourly fidelity, | [76] |
| Division of First Year’s Work into three portions, | [76] |
| First portion—Analysis and Descriptive Geometry, | [76] |
| Second portion—Mechanics, Geodesy, Physics, &c., | [76] |
| Third portion—General Private Study, | [76] |
| Number and Subjects of Lectures in Second Course, | [78] |
| V. Examinational System, | [78] |
| Ordinary Examinations, | [78] |
| 1. By Professors on their own Lectures, both Written and Oral, | [78] |
| 2. By Examiners on the Manipulations of the Pupils, | [78] |
| 3. By Répétiteurs every ten or fourteen days, | [78] |
| 4. By Professors and Répétiteurs at the close of each Course, | [79] |
| First Annual Examination, | [79] |
| Table—Co-efficient of Influence in Second Division of First Year’s Course, | [79] |
| Specimen of Credits gained by one Student in First Year’s Course, | [80] |
| Persons excluded from the Second Year’s Course, | [81] |
| Second Annual or Great Final Examination, | [81] |
| Conducted by the same Examiners as the First, | [81] |
| Oral, and extends over the whole Two Years’ Course, | [81] |
| Results based on each Day’s Study’s, Year’s, and Examination’s results, | [82] |
| Tables—Co-efficients of Influence in Final Classification, &c., | [82] |
| Order in which the Public Services are Selected, | [83] |
| VI. General Remarks on Character and Results of the Polytechnic School, | [84] |
| Appendix, | [88] |
| Public Services Beside the Army Supplied by This School, | [88] |
| 1. Gunpowder and Saltpetre, | [88] |
| 2. Navy, | [88] |
| 3. Marine Artillery and Foundries, | [88] |
| 4. Naval Architects. School of Application at L’Orient, | [88] |
| 5. Hydrographers, | [88] |
| 6. Roads and Bridges. School of Application at Paris, | [89] |
| 7. Mining Engineers. School of Mines at Paris and St. Etienne, | [89] |
| 8. Tobacco Department | [90] |
| 9. Telegraphs, | [90] |
| Programmes of Internal Instruction During the Two Years of Study, | [91] |
| 1. Analysis, | [91] |
| First Year—Calculus, Differential, | [91] |
| First Year—Calculus, Integral, | [93] |
| Second Year—Calculus, Integral, (continuation,) | [94] |
| 2. Descriptive Geometry and Stereotomy, | [97] |
| First Year—Descriptive Geometry, Geometrical Drawing, | [97] |
| Second Year—Stereotomy: Wood-work, | [103] |
| Second Year—Masonry, | [103] |
| 3. Mechanics and Machines, | [104] |
| First Year—Kinematics, | [105] |
| First Year—Equilibrium of Forces, | [105] |
| Second Year—Dynamics, | [112] |
| Second Year—Hydrostatics, | [115] |
| Second Year—Hydraulics, | [115] |
| Second Year—Machines in Motion, | [116] |
| 4. Physics, | [116] |
| First Year—General Properties of Bodies, Hydrostatics, Hydrodynamics, | [117] |
| First Year—Heat, | [119] |
| First Year—Statical Electricity, | [123] |
| Second Year—Dynamical Electricity, | [124] |
| Second Year—Acoustics, | [125] |
| Second Year—Optics, | [126] |
| 5. Manipulations in Physics, | [129] |
| First and Second Year, | [130] |
| Distribution of Time, | [131] |
[THE POLYTECHNIC SCHOOL AT PARIS][8]
[I. FOUNDATION AND HISTORY.]
The origin of the Ecole Polytechnique dates from a period of disorder and distress in the history of France which might seem alien to all intellectual pursuits, if we did not remember that the general stimulus of a revolutionary period often acts powerfully upon thought and education. It is, perhaps, even more than the Institute, the chief scientific creation of the first French Revolution. It was during the government of the committee of public safety, when Carnot, as war minister, was gradually driving back the invading armies, and reorganizing victory out of defeat and confusion, that the first steps were taken for its establishment. A law, dating the 1st Ventose, year II., the 12th of March 1794, created a “Commission des Travaux Publics,” charged with the duty of establishing a regular system for carrying on public works; and this commission ultimately founded a central school for public works, and drew up a plan for the competitive examination of candidates for admission to the service. It was intended at first to give a complete education for some of the public services, but it was soon changed into a preparatory school, to be succeeded by special schools of application. This was the Ecole Polytechnique.
[The school and its plan] were both owing to an immediate and pressing want. It was to be partly military and partly civil. Military, as well as civil education had been destroyed by the revolutionists. The committee of public safety had, indeed, formed a provisional school for engineers at Metz, to supply the immediate wants of the army on the frontier, and at this school young men were hastily taught the elements of fortification, and were sent direct to the troops, to learn as they best could, the practice of their art. “But such a method,” says the report accompanying the law which founded the school, “does not form engineers in any true sense of the term, and can only be justified by the emergency of the time. The young men should be recalled to the new school to complete their studies.” Indeed no one knew better than Carnot, to use the language of the report, “that patriotism and courage can not always supply the want of knowledge;” and in the critical campaigns of 1793–4, he must often have felt the need of the institution which he was then contributing to set on foot. Such was the immediate motive for the creation of this school. At first, it only included the engineers amongst its pupils. But the artillery were added within a year.
We must not, however, omit to notice its civil character, the combination of which with its military object forms its peculiar feature, and has greatly contributed to its reputation. Amongst its founders were men, who though ardent revolutionists, were thirsting for the restoration of schools and learning, which for a time had been totally extinguished. The chief of these, besides Carnot, were Monge and Fourcroy, Berthollet and Lagrange. Of Carnot and Lagrange, one amongst the first of war ministers, the other one of the greatest of mathematicians, we need not say more. Berthollet, a man of science and practical skill, first suggested the school; Monge, the founder of Descriptive Geometry, a favorite savant of Napoleon though a zealous republican, united to real genius that passion for teaching and for his pupils, which makes the beau idéal of the founder of a school; and Fourcroy was a man of equal practical tact and science, who at the time had great influence with the convention, and was afterwards intrusted by Napoleon with much of the reorganization of education in France.
When the school first started there was scarcely another of any description in the country. For nearly three years the revolution had destroyed every kind of teaching. The attack upon the old schools, in France, as elsewhere, chiefly in the hands of the clergy, had been begun by a famous report of Talleyrand’s, presented to the legislative assembly in 1791, which recommended to suppress all the existing academies within Paris and the provinces, and to replace them by an entirely new system of national education through the country. In this plan a considerable number of military schools were proposed, where boys were to be educated from a very early age. When the violent revolutionists were in power, they adopted the destructive part of Talleyrand’s suggestions without the other. All schools, from the university downwards, were destroyed; the large exhibitions or Bourses, numbering nearly 40,000, were confiscated or plundered by individuals, and even the military schools and those for the public works (which were absolutely necessary for the very roads and the defense of the country) were suppressed or disorganized. The school of engineers at Mézières (an excellent one, where Monge had been a professor,) and that of the artillery at La Fère, were both broken up, whilst the murder of Lavoisier, and the well known saying in respect to it, that “the Republic had no need of chemists,” gave currency to a belief, which Fourcroy expressed in proposing the Polytechnic, “that the late conspirators had formed a deliberate plan to destroy the arts and sciences, and to establish their tyranny on the ruins of human reason.”