Bourgeois Aspirations: A biographical sketch of Hector Ledru, manufacturer and inventor (1798–1876)

During the first half of the nineteenth century, the French economy underwent a major technological change, with small and medium-scale entrepreneurs driving the industrialisation by developing and exploiting new technologies. This paper examines the life of one such entrepreneur, Hector Ledru (ca. 1798–1876), who started out in the sugar industry of the post Napoleonic era. He soon morphed into an entrepreneur exploiting patents in the manufacture of wooden barrel manufacture, galvanised iron and metal pipes, before he settled on the manufacture and installation of central heating systems. Ledru serves as an example of the archetypical small and later medium-scale entrepreneur making his way in post Napoleonic France, never reaching national fame, but all the way adjusting to the various social and economic circumstances.