| Summary: | This paper concerns the scientific education of the princes and the composition of the cabinet of scientific instruments. The first cabinet made at Versailles is that of the Children of France, created under the supervision of Menus Plaisirs. From 1758 it included instruments chosen from the 345 described in Abbé Nollet’s catalogue of 1738 in his Programme ou Idée générale d’un cours de physique expérimentale. In 1762 Menus Plaisirs had already bought more than 180 scientific objects, instruments, materials and furniture that were enriched by successive purchases, which continued in 1765, when there is another inventory. Surprising as it may seem, the two inventories have never been compared, and put into perspective with the list made during the revolutionary sequestrations.Thus these two successive inventories for this rare princely cabinet enable the clarification of the princes’ scientific culture through the careful selection of the objects ordered from Nollet by the princes’ team of tutors. The policy of acquiring these instruments gives an indication of the scientific practices of the princes. Was electricity favoured over mechanics or fluids? What place did the observation of the infinitely large and the infinitely small have? Were there instruments procured from other manufactures? The cabinet can be usefully compared with those rare cabinets of which we know the purchase inventory, those of Madame Du Châtelet and Voltaire, which also had Nollet instruments. The analysis of these inventories goes well beyond the simple choice of instruments for the Physics Cabinet of the Children of France.It comes to connecting the instruments with the educational practice of the princes, showing the creation of a “scholastic discipline” taught to them, while public demonstrations were taking place in court. Can we thus distinguish a cabinet of education, a cabinet of experimentation or a collection of instruments?This paper, which starts from precise historical sources to deepen the knowledge of the scientific education of the Duke of Berry (the future Louis XVI) and his brother, which has remained general. It forms part of the epistemology of science and educational research on the origins of scientific culture that occurred at Versailles. It extends the current research on the cabinets of curiosity that investigates the scientific practice of the eighteenth century.
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