If your willing, as you indicated in your OP to go pre-1900 I might share the (modified) draft for one of my timelines. Sorry if it gets a bit long.
The Ideological Founder Henri de Saint-Simon
First for a french technocracy Henri de Saint-Simon sound like your guy:
„He created a political and economic ideology known as industrialism that claimed that the needs of an industrial class, which he also referred to as the working class, needed to be recognized and fulfilled to have an effective society and an efficient economy.
Unlike later conceptions by others of a working class being manual labourers alone, Saint-Simon's conception of this class included all people engaged in productive work that contributed to society, that included businesspeople, managers, scientists, bankers, along with manual labourers amongst others. He said the primary threat to the needs of the industrial class was another class he referred to as the idling class, that included able people who preferred to be parasitic and benefit from the work of others while seeking to avoid doing work.
Saint-Simon stressed the need for recognition of the merit of the individual and the need for hierarchy of merit in society and in the economy, such as society having hierarchical merit-based organizations of managers and scientists to be the decision-makers in government.[9] He strongly criticized any expansion of government intervention into the economy beyond ensuring no hindrances to productive work and reducing idleness in society, regarding intervention beyond these as too intrusive
American Roots for a Revolutionary Economy: Oliver Evans
Oliver Evans (September 13, 1755 – April 15, 1819) was an American inventor, engineer and businessman. A pioneer in the fields of automation, materials handling and steam power, Evans was one of the most prolific and influential inventors in the early years of the United States. He left behind a long series of accomplishments, most notably designing and building the first fully automated industrial process
Evans's attention turned to flour milling in the early 1780s, an industry which was booming in rapidly industrializing northern Delaware. In this era, the operation of grist mills was labor-intensive. Although the stages of the milling process—grinding, cooling, sifting and packing—were beginning to be mechanized to various degrees, gravity or manual labor was required to move grain from one stage to the next. (….) Despite their technical complexity, neither device was revolutionary by the standards of the time. However, the total vision of their design was. Evans was attempting a radical shift in thinking about the manufacturing process, treating it as a continuous integrated whole rather than a series of isolated processes. Thus, manufacturing could be a fully automated production line. The missing link was materials handling, and Evans's mill designs sought to feed materials continuously through a system without the need for any human intervention. This was the first fully automated industrial process, and the idea of continuous production was proved to be a critical ingredient of the industrial revolution, and would ultimately lay the foundation for modern mass production.
French Automation on Steroids:
I was reading a magazine at the machine shop today and it had an article about a Frenchman by the name of Jacques de Vaucanson. Apparently he was big into automatons and other gadgets, which to be honest I'm not that interested in.
I was reading the article because he invented the all metal slide rest lathe, as I'm a set-up man on lathes and that's really what I was looking for in the magazine. So in any case, the article mentioned Vaucanson's work with the lathe, and how he more or less perfected it decades before it was popularized at the gunworks in Britain by Maudsley.
This is all well and good, and I could go on and on about how interesting that is to someone like me. This guy was making lathes like a sonofabitch, and all-metal ones too.Then something at the end of the article blew me away: Vaucanson died while he was working on regulating the French silk industry. He had designed a mechanical loom that more or less took manual weaving out of the equation and only had the person load it. (So? Why is this important? You ask.)
The concept was that punch cards would be fed through the top, giving a modicum of control to the speed and movement of the loom.
Enter Joseph Marie Jacquard: this man took Vaucanson's design and improved on it, taking multiple punch cards and putting them together into a string with each line on a card representing a line of pattern that the loom prints out. For the machinists in the audience: in 1801, Vaucanson and Joseph Marie Jacquard invented a proto-NC tape machine.
NC is short for Numerical Coding, or the use of a code to tell a tool (in that case a loom) where to move and how. It was the precursor to CNC, or Computer Numerical Coding which allowed modern flight control surfaces of helicopters and jets to be built with accuracy and repetition. (literally: CNC was actually invented by a man who had a USAF helicopter contract from Sikorsky) What Jacqaurd (or anyone else for that matter) didn't seem to put together for many decades was that the same punched cards that could move a loom (or a player piano) in incredibly precise and intricate steps could also be used for a lathe. Vaucanson was one of the few men who seemed to have both ideas at once, but he never put them together. I don't really have any grand POD for this, but I thought I'd throw this out there for you guys to nibble at.
Henri de Saint-Simon meets Oliver Evans
In OTL Claude Henri de Rouvroy, comte de Saint-Simon "When he was a young man, being of a restless disposition...he went to America where he entered into American service and took part in the siege of Yorktown under General Washington."
Also in OTL Oliver Evans brother Joseph travelled widely to promote Evans's work, and according to some sources, by 1792 over one hundred mills were operating Evans machinery. When George Washington called upon Joseph Tatnall in 1790 to thank him for the flour he provided to feed the Continental Army during the War of Independence, he saw Evans's technology at work in the mills in Brandywine Village and was so impressed that had his own gristmill at Mount Vernon converted to the Evans system in 1791, the completion of which was overseen by Evans's brothers.
Again in OTL the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789, Saint-Simon quickly endorsed the revolutionary ideals of liberty, equality and fraternity. In the early years of the revolution, Saint-Simon devoted himself to organizing a large industrial structure in order to found a scientific school of improvement. He needed to raise some funds to achieve his objectives, which he did by land speculation. This was only possible in the first few years of the revolution because of the growing instability of the political situation in France, which prevented him from continuing his financial activities and indeed put his life at risk. During The Terror period, Saint-Simon was imprisoned on suspicion of engaging in counter-revolution activities. He was released in 1794 at the end of the Reign of Terror. After he recovered his freedom, Saint-Simon found himself immensely rich due to currency depreciation, but his fortune was subsequently stolen by his business partner. Thenceforth he decided to devote himself to political studies and research.
Have him not betrayyed but in search for good business oppertunities in America. Trough his connections he encouncters Jospeh. He use his fortune to import the technology to France before anyone else does. He also keeps in contact with Evans and instead of both of them getting impoverished they realize their ambitious technological dreams. Encouraged by the success of the automated mill, he hears about another great idea in need of investment the success the Jacquard NC-Lathe…..
How such a society might look gets a discussed a bit more in depth here:
Vaucanson, Jacqaurd, and NC Machining.
If anybody is interested I can flesh out the rest of the development a bit more ;-).