ABSTRACT
The history of construction of the Canal du Midi in seventeenth-century France provides evidence of non-simultaneity in work practices, and illustrates how non-simultaneity can facilitate some forms of innovation that we take to be exemplars of modernization. The Canal du Midi was a navigational canal of extraordinary length and technical sophistication built in seventeenth-century France. It was also a clear product of past and present – ancient knowledge and contemporary problem solving. The Canal du Midi was not done until the 1680s, and repairs continued long after that. But the accuracy of the assessment was not what made it important. It was a profile of the project in time, describing simultaneous activity across sites. The snapshot of work in March 1672 made vivid the non-simultaneity of the knowledges and cultural practices used on the Canal du Midi.
