ABSTRACT
France is internationally recognized for the quality of its engineering and scientific research, invention and production. (There have been several Nobel prize-winners in science in the postwar years, the most recent in 1997.) The country has specialized in advanced methods of transportation (the very fast train, or TGV), airspace industry (Airbus and the Ariane rocket), petroleum prospecting and production, telecommunications, electrical equipment and information technology, including the very successful Minitel, introduced some fifteen years ago by France Télécom, but now superseded by the Internet. France is no less well known for its innovative car designs and manufacture; nevertheless, Renault and Peugeot-Citroën have lost nearly half their share of the world market in the last twenty-five years.
