@ARTICLE{10.21494/ISTE.OP.2021.0733, TITLE={The Guénon System: A Technological Innovation for the Improvement of Dairy Cow Selection (1830s-1900s)}, AUTHOR={Fabien Knittel, }, JOURNAL={Technology and Innovation}, VOLUME={6}, NUMBER={Issue 4}, YEAR={2021}, URL={http://www.openscience.fr/The-Guenon-System-A-Technological-Innovation-for-the-Improvement-of-Dairy-Cow}, DOI={10.21494/ISTE.OP.2021.0733}, ISSN={2399-8571}, ABSTRACT={This paper principally aims to examine the original career path of François Guénon, a cattle merchant from Bordeaux. In the late 1830s, he set up a pioneering system the purpose of which was to improve the selection of the most effective dairy cows. The system was dealt with in the article Traité des vaches laitières, first published in 1838. The empirical process which aimed to pick the best dairy cows was successfully implemented. However, from the 1860s onwards, this initial success was debated among agronomists like Eugène Tisserant (1818-1888), a then Professor of hygiene at the veterinary school of Lyon, who dismissed his work as scientifically groundless. Nevertheless, these critical comments neither weakened the efficiency and the use of the Guénon system nor prevented its teaching within certain farming schools at the beginning of the 20th century.}}