Until 1840-50 in practice, the agricultural implements used by the whole of the French rural population were almost the same as they had been two or three centuries before. The elaborate sketches of complex machines that can be found in the great Cours d'Agriculture of Morogues were undoubtedly no better known in his time than was the drill, for instance, in the time of Tull and Duhamel. In this respect, England was still far more advanced than France. Nevertheless, the second part of the eighteenth century had seen the agronomes lay down the principles of a necessary change in agricultural implements.

The agronomes gave an important place to machinery in their agricultural theories, and we must try to determine what is its position in respect to the whole problem of agriculture at the end of the ancien rêgime, and attempt to estimate how much that position owes to England.

The movement towards innovation of agricultural implements, must be included in the more general one, in existence since the middle of the eighteenth century, for the improvement of technique in the manufacture of instruments and in the mechanical arts. Although engineers were not lacking in France at the beginning of the eighteenth century, it was only in the second part of the century that application of science to technique made important progress. The movement was illustrated by names like Vaucanson, Montgolfier, Gribeauval and so on. Commonly read and popular books, newspapers, periodicals, dictionaries, encyclopaedias, constantly reproduced articles on and illustrations of, a great variety of inventions. Men like Goyon de la Plombanie, filled several periodicals with all sorts of inventions and projects, in which ingenious ideas can be met together with the most ridiculous ones. Members of the Academy of Sciences concentrated on mechanical problems, and members of the nobility were engineers and inventors.

In this movement prominent place should be given to inventions concerning industry, the connections of which with a similar movement in England have been pointed out sufficiently.

However, in this effervescence of change, any contemporaries whose interest was in agriculture felt that agricultural machinery was making no progress. The Encyclopédie noted: ‘Cependant la charrue est toujours la meme depuis des siécles…. Notre charrue n'est pas meilleure que celle des Grecs et des Romains.’.