7. Mechanical inventions attempt to ease repetitive tasks, but the label “easy” applied to mechanical arts is problematic for Denis Diderot (co-founder with d'Alembert of the Encyclopédie), if not for all the encyclopedists. For Diderot, mechanical arts compete on the level of intellectual invention, and the voluminous engravings of the Encyclopédie depicting trades, crafts, and machines attest to this valuation. Thus the differential calculus, represented here as “easier” pushes high geometry to the level of mechanical trade, while at the same time it prioritizes its mechanics for this same higher mathematics, although in greater degrees.