ABSTRACT
Now the greatest discovery of our age is that force, like matter, is indestructible, and that it can no more be created than can matter. yndall’s “Heat considered as a Mode of Motion,” and in a little work by Professor Balfour Stewart, entitled “The Conservation of Energy,” and quite fascinating from the clearness and simplicity of its style. The greatest discovery of the age has, as already indicated, immediate and important practical bearings. The amount of thought which, even in the present day, is devoted by unscientific mechanics to the old problem of perpetual motion is far greater than is generally supposed. The principle of the conservation of energy shows that this is an impossibility; that the inventor who seeks to create force might just as well try to create matter; that the production of a perpetually moving self-sustaining machine is as far removed from human power as the bringing into existence of a new planet.
