You may not know

Sadi Carnot* ""Quite un- known”—such was the fate of thegreatmemoir which laid the foundations of the second law of ther- modynamics, and its auth...
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YOU MAY NOT KNOW. ,. By R. ROSEMAN

,,. .. .. T WITHA T

and

B. W. ALLAN

DASH MINUS

T,

DASH DOWN BELOW?"

N. L. S. CARNOT 1796-1832

W. THOMSON 1824-1907

THE FOUNDER OP THERMO-

THE DISCOVERER OF

DYNAMICS

CARNOT

" A n epoch-making gift to ~cience"

-LORD

"I went to every bookj shop I could think of, asking for the Puissance mofrice dufeu, by Carnot. 'Caino? Je ne connais pas cet auteur.' With much difficulty I managed to explain that it was 'r' not 'i' I meant. 'Ah! Ca-rrr-not! Oui, voici son ouvrage,' producing a volume on some social question by Hippolyte Carnot; but the Puissance motrice du feu was quite unknown. Thus, in 1845, did young William.. Thomson (who

KELVIN

was later to become Lord Kelvin) search in vain for Reflexions sur la puissance motrice du feu et sur les machines propres a developper ceffe puissance (Paris,

2,

'

A PAGE FROM CARNOT'S NOTES

170

1824), by Nicolas Leonard Sadi Carnot. "Quite unknownu-such was t h e fate of the great memoir which laid the foundations of the second law of thermodynamics, a n d i t s author, who, a t twentyeight, had done the "grandest work of the century in l his province of thought."