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Your development of thermo-dynamics, coupled with the great discovery of Joule of the numerical relation of heat and dynamic effect, or the quantity of the one that is equal to a quantity of the other, places within our reach the numerical result to be obtained from assumed elements of heat prime movers.
The thermo-battery, the discovery of Seebeck in 1822, was alluded to as a means of converting heat into electric energy in the most direct manner; but this conversion could not be an entire one, because the second law of thermo-dynamics, which prevented the realization as mechanical force of more than one seventh part of the heat energy produced in combustion under the boiler, applied equally to the thermo-electric battery, in which the heat, conducted from the hot points of juncture to the cold, constituted a formidable loss.
He might mention that not long after the thermo-dynamic theory was so far developed as to determine the amount of heat converted into power, a very eminent French Engineer M. Hirn conducted some experiments on steam-engines at a large factory, and thought he could account for the whole heat of combustion in the condensed water and the heat which passed away; so much so that he actually doubted altogether the theory of thermo-dynamics.
They are factors of great significance and potential force. Towards the end of the eighteenth century the industrial-financial revolution began. Within the space of an hundred years came all the revelations of the potential inherent in thermo-dynamics and electricity, and the invention of the machines that have changed the world.
But, for that matter, the experiments that had established the mechanical equivalent of heat hardly left room for doubt as to the immateriality of this "imponderable." Out of these studies, just at the middle of the century, to which the experiments of Mayer and Joule had led, grew the new science of thermo-dynamics.
It is to you that we chiefly owe the development of that branch of the science called Thermo-dynamics, which has revolutionised the theory of heat and the principles of all the machines dependent on that theory. The steam engine, the most important instrument, I believe, in existence, is now placed on two principles.
Nor are we confined to this supposition. Silex is an element which enters largely into the composition of wheaten straw; and it is worthy of remark that, in most cases where fire is purposely generated by the agency of thermo-dynamics, some form of silex is enlisted flint, for instance, or the silicious covering of endogenous plants, such as bamboo, and so forth. A theory might be built on this."
This form of 'perpetual motion' might be equally obtainable if Dr. Preston's theory of an ether as the cause of gravity be true. Indeed, Professor Poynting is now engaged in searching for such a crystal, which, if discovered, will upset the second law of thermo-dynamics.
In his researches on Thermo-dynamics, Professor Thomson has been equally successful. In his papers 'On the Dynamical Theory of Heat, he has applied the fundamental propositions of the theory to bodies of all kinds, and he has adduced many curious and important results regarding the specific heats of bodies, which have been completely verified by the accurate experiments of M. Joule.
Rankine's literary career commenced while he was in Edinburgh with the publication of a series of papers on the mechanical action of heat. His theory of the development of heat as one of the forces of thermo-dynamics was propounded simultaneously with that of Professor Clausius of Berlin, in 1849, and supplied the only link that was wanted to make the theory of the steam engine a perfect science.
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