Calenda Ad 1,431,078 (excerpts)
The 300th anniversary of the death of engineer Antoine Niquet (1726), the chief architect of the development of the French Mediterranean coastline at a time when pivotal decisions were being made, provides an opportunity to revisit how hydraulic techniques were applied in such projects. In particular, the period spanning the 17th to the 19th centuries allows us to observe, at work, technicians who possessed knowledge that was at times quite rudimentary (the mathematization of hydraulics began in the late 18th century) yet were tasked with constructing structures that had major geomorphological effects. In other words, the aim is to study situations in which one must act without fully knowing what one is doing.
