Nice and warm. History of heating in the 20th century

Maison Suger is pleased to host the third session of the seminar organised by GRETS, Nice and warm. A history of heating in the 20th century, with Renan Viguié, Associate Professor of History, Committee for the History of Electricity and Energy. The session will be introduced by Mathieu Durand Daubin, (EDF R&D, GRETS).

In September 2022, faced with the energy crisis, Bruno Le Maire, then Minister of Economy and Finance, invited French citizens to show restraint by wearing turtleneck sweaters in order to lower their heating. Heating is thus an essential part of everyday life for households, a strategic issue for energy companies, and a subject of public policy. Today, faced with the climate emergency and the need to reduce energy consumption, current heating practices, equipment, and comfort standards may seem natural and difficult to change. However, they are constantly evolving, following a 20th century that saw many transformations. 

In this seminar, Renan Viguié will look back at how this domestic use of energy has developed. He traces its trajectory throughout the 20th century based on extensive documentary research, drawing in particular on national and local archives and those of numerous players in the energy sector (companies, associations, agencies, etc.). These documents, technical notices, advertisements, meeting minutes, official speeches, correspondence between companies and public authorities, and regulatory texts reveal the concrete development of new heating practices through a series of multiple amendments to technical devices, perceptions, regulations, and markets.

Far from the idea of linear progress, in which technical innovation naturally brings greater comfort or savings, these abundant developments are the result of specific interactions, negotiations, partnerships, or competitions between actors whose challenges, constraints, and prerogatives are neither uniform nor constant, varying according to changing contexts (recurring crises, economic cycles and fluctuations in energy prices, periods of (re)construction, etc.). Thus, the decline of the fireplace and stove in favor of centralized technical systems, and that of material energies (wood and coal) in favor of networked distributed energies, has transformed not only the ways in which the French consume energy, but also the ways in which they inhabit their homes: television has replaced the fire as the magnetic center of family life. 

• Renan Viguié holds a PhD in history from Bordeaux-Montaigne University, is a secondary school teacher and scientific secretary of the Committee for the History of Electricity and Energy. His work focuses on the economic, social and cultural history of energy in the 20th century. 

• Viguié, R., 2024. Bien au chaud. Histoire du chauffage au Xxème siècle, Paris, Presses des Mines, 2024, 321p.
• Viguié, R., 2020. Une courbe pour bien se chauffer. Les températures de chauffage préconisées au XXe siècle. Flux N°121, 102. 
• Viguié, R., 2023. Le confort hors réseau. Se chauffer au bois, au charbon et au pétrole dans les villes françaises au XXe siècle: Flux N° 131, 15–31. sociales. Éditions du Bord de l’Eau, 2024.