ABSTRACT
THE steam-engine having furnished us with a means of converting heat into a motive power, and our thoughts being
thereby led to regard a certain quantity of work as an equivalent for the amount of heat expended in its production, the idea of establishing theoretically some fixed relation between a quantity of heat and the quantity of work which it can possibly produce, from which relation conclusions regarding the nature of heat itself might be deduced, naturally presents itself. Already, indeed, have many instructive experiments been made with this view; I believe, however, that they have not exhausted the subject, but that, on the contrary, it merits the continued attention of physicists ; partly because weighty objections lie in the way of the conclusions already dt·awn, and partly because other conclusions, which might render efficient aid towards establishing and completing the theory of heat, remain either entirely unnoticed, or have not as yet found sufficiently distinct expression.
