page_title: History of thermodynamics
section_title: Birth of thermodynamics as a science
hierarchical_section_title: History of thermodynamics / History / Birth of thermodynamics as a science
caption_attribution_description: English: A beam engine of the Watt type, built by D. Napier and Son (London) in 1859. It was one of the first beam engines installed in Spain. It drove the coining presses of the Royal Spanish Mint until the end of the 19th century. In 1910 it was donated to the Higher Technical School of Industrial Engineering of Madrid (part of the UPM) and installed in its lobby. Español: Una máquina de vapor de tipo Watt, construida por la compañía David Napier &amp; Son Limited (Londres) en 1859. Fue de las primeras máquinas de vapor que se instalaron en España. Hasta finales del siglo XIX, accionó las prensas de acuñación de la Fábrica Nacional de Moneda y Timbre. En 1910 fue donada a la Escuela Técnica Superior de Ingenieros Industriales de Madrid (parte de la UPM) e instalada en su vestíbulo.
context_page_description: The history of thermodynamics is a fundamental strand in the history of physics, the history of chemistry, and the history of science in general. Owing to the relevance of thermodynamics in much of science and technology, its history is finely woven with the developments of classical mechanics, quantum mechanics, magnetism, and chemical kinetics, to more distant applied fields such as meteorology, information theory, and biology, and to technological developments such as the steam engine, internal combustion engine, cryogenics and electricity generation. The development of thermodynamics both drove and was driven by atomic theory. It also, albeit in a subtle manner, motivated new directions in probability and statistics; see, for example, the timeline of thermodynamics.
context_section_description: Irish physicist and chemist Robert Boyle in 1656, in coordination with English scientist Robert Hooke, built an air pump. Using this pump, Boyle and Hooke noticed the pressure-volume correlation: P.V=constant. In that time, air was assumed to be a system of motionless particles, and not interpreted as a system of moving molecules. The concept of thermal motion came two centuries later.  Therefore, Boyle's publication in 1660 speaks about a mechanical concept: the air spring. Later, after the invention of the thermometer, the property temperature could be quantified. This tool gave Gay-Lussac the opportunity to derive his law, which led shortly later to the ideal gas law.  But, already before the establishment of the ideal gas law, an associate of Boyle's named Denis Papin built in 1679 a bone digester, which is a closed vessel with a tightly fitting lid that confines steam until a high pressure is generated.
  Later designs implemented a steam release valve to keep the machine from exploding.  By watching the valve rhythmically move up and down, Papin conceived of the idea of a piston and cylinder engine.  He did not however follow through with his design. Nevertheless, in 1697, based on Papin's designs, engineer Thomas Savery built the first engine. Although these early engines were crude and inefficient, they attracted the attention of the leading scientists of the time. One such scientist was Sadi Carnot, the "father of thermodynamics", who in 1824 published Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire, a discourse on heat, power, and engine efficiency.  This marks the start of thermodynamics as a modern science.
  Hence, prior to 1698 and the invention of the Savery Engine, horses were used to power pulleys, attached to buckets, which lifted water out of flooded salt mines in England. In the years to follow, more variations of steam engines were built, such as the Newcomen Engine, and later the Watt Engine. In time, these early engines would eventually be utilized in place of horses.  Thus, each engine began to be associated with a certain amount of "horse power" depending upon how many horses it had replaced. The main problem with these first engines was that they were slow and clumsy, converting less than 2% of the input fuel into useful work.  In other words, large quantities of coal (or wood) had to be burned to yield only a small fraction of work output.  Hence the need for a new science of engine dynamics was born.
  Most cite Sadi Carnot's 1824 book Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire as the starting point for thermodynamics as a modern science.  Carnot defined "motive power" to be the expression of the useful effect that a motor is capable of producing.  Herein, Carnot introduced us to the first modern day definition of "work": weight lifted through a height.   The desire to understand, via formulation, this useful effect in relation to "work" is at the core of all modern day thermodynamics.
  In 1843, James Joule experimentally found the mechanical equivalent of heat. In 1845, Joule reported his best-known experiment, involving the use of a falling weight to spin a paddle-wheel in a barrel of water, which allowed him to estimate a mechanical equivalent of heat of 819 ft·lbf/Btu (4.41 J/cal). This led to the theory of conservation of energy and explained why heat can do work.
  In 1850, the famed mathematical physicist Rudolf Clausius coined the term "entropy" (das Wärmegewicht, symbolized S) to denote heat lost or turned into waste. ("Wärmegewicht" translates literally as "heat-weight"; the corresponding English term stems from the Greek τρέπω, "I turn".)
  The name "thermodynamics", however, did not arrive until 1854, when the British mathematician and physicist William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) coined the term thermo-dynamics in his paper On the Dynamical Theory of Heat.
  In association with Clausius, in 1871, the Scottish mathematician and physicist James Clerk Maxwell formulated a new branch of thermodynamics called Statistical Thermodynamics, which functions to analyze large numbers of particles at equilibrium, i.e., sys
caption: A Watt steam engine, the steam engine that propelled the Industrial Revolution in Britain and the world
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