Nature, in providing us with combustibles on all sides, has given us the power to produce, at all times and in all places, heat and the impelling power which is the result of it.
French physicist, the "father of thermodynamics" (1796–1832)
A French military engineer who published exactly one essay — in 1824, on the efficiency of heat engines — then died at 36 in obscurity. That lone work became the foundation of thermodynamics after others decoded it a decade later.
Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot was born 1 June 1796, son of Lazare Carnot, a mathematician and commander in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic armies. He graduated from the École polytechnique and served as an officer in the Engineering Arm, but his family faced persecution after Napoleon's fall in 1815, which shadowed his career. In June 1824 he published Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire, developing the first successful theory of maximum heat engine efficiency. The work drew little notice until 1834, when Émile Clapeyron wrote a detailed commentary that reached William Thomson and Rudolf Cl…
Sourced, dated quotes from Nicolas Léonard Sadi Carnot
Nature, in providing us with combustibles on all sides, has given us the power to produce, at all times and in all places, heat and the impelling power which is the result of it.
Iron and heat are... the supporters, the bases, of the mechanic arts.
To take away to-day from England her steam-engines would be to take away at the same time her coal and iron.
Steam navigation... tends to unite the nations of the earth as inhahitants of one country. ...is not this the same as greatly to shorten distances?
Savery, Newcomen, Smeaton, the famous Watt, Woolf, Trevithick, and some other English engineers, are the veritable creators of the steam-engine.
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