ABSTRACT
The failure to discriminate between combustion and other forms of heat naturally induced some people to extend to all forms of heat what they believed to be true of combustion. Robert Boyle examined experimentally the view that air is necessary to the production of heat, and arrived at an adverse verdict. The conception of “thermal capacity” appears to have originated with the Accademia del Cimento. Some of its members conducted a variety of experiments on the conduction of heat and the associated phenomenon, thermal capacity. They made a mercury thermometer and a water thermometer of the same size as their ordinary alcohol thermometers. The phenomena of sound engaged the attention of many people from early times. Their interest was mainly directed to music, though Pythagoras, Aristotle, Vitruvius, and possibly others in ancient and mediaeval times also made a purely scientific study of the physics of these phenomena.
