In 1996, the King Baudouin Foundation acquired an important collection of 24 manuscripts and 6 printed documents relating to the scientific, technological and industrial development of the Liege industrial basin.
Numerous innovations
During the 18th and 19th centuries, Belgium saw the development of numerous innovations that were spreading across the whole of Europe and well beyond its frontiers. The contents of this collection – texts, illustrations, machines – concern not just Belgium, but all the industrialized countries. Items as rare as the documents put up for auction in Liege in 1996 always provoke great interest among foreign museums and international collectors and only the intervention of the King Baudouin Foundation enabled these documents to be saved and kept in Belgium. The collection had been constituted over decades by leading engineers and industrialists and today it has been entrusted to the University of Liege Library. Website of the University of Liege LibraryFurther information about the Heritage Fund (in French)
