Encyclopedic Liberty. Jean Le Rond d'Alembert

      Pinmaking had an honored place among eighteenth-century commentators. In his Cyclopedia article for “pin,” Chambers had already written that “the number of artificers employed” in their manufacture was “incredible.”¹ Adam Smith was already using the example of pin manufacturing to illustrate the modern division of labor in the early draft of The Wealth of Nations and in his lectures on jurisprudence in the 1760s before he made the example famous in The Wealth of Nations itself. It would seem that Smith had Deleyre’s Encyclopédie article mainly in mind rather than Chambers’s earlier entry, since he attributes to pinmaking “about eighteen distinct operations” rather than the twenty-five that appear in the Englishman’s work.² Another difference between Chambers and Deleyre is the Baconian flourish that Diderot appends to the latter’s article. See the entry on Deleyre in Contributors, above, pp. xxvii–xxviii.

      PIN (Mechanical art), a small straight metal tool, pointed at one end, used as a detachable clip on linen and fabrics to fix the different shapes given to them when dressing, working, or packing.

      Of all mechanical works, the pin is the thinnest, commonest, and cheapest. And yet, it is one of those that demand perhaps the most combinations.³

      [print edition page 166]

      Thus it happens that art as well as nature displays its prodigies in small objects, and that industry is as limited in its focus as it is wondrous in its resourcefulness. For a pin undergoes eighteen operations before becoming an item of trade.

      [Deleyre next describes the eighteen operations in detailed numbered paragraphs. Then, in his remaining six long paragraphs, he distinguishes pin types by length and width and by materials (brass vs. iron), treating the preparation of the raw materials in some detail. We omit these paragraphs and include only Diderot’s editorial identification at the end.]

      This article is by M. Delaire, who was describing the manufacture of the pin in the workers’ actual workshops, based on our designs, at the same time that he was publishing in Paris his analysis of Chancellor Bacon’s sublime and profound philosophy. Bacon’s work, combined with the foregoing description, will prove that a good mind can sometimes enjoy the same success rising to the highest contemplations of philosophy as it does descending to the most minutely detailed mechanics. Moreover, whoever has some acquaintance with the views the English philosopher held as he was composing his works will not be surprised to see his disciple pass without disdain from his research on the general laws of nature to the least important use of nature’s productions.