CARNOT, Nicolas Léonard Sadi.

Réflexions sur la Puissance Motrice du Feu et sur les Machines propres a développer cette Puissance.

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One folding engraved plate. 2 p.l., 118 pp. 8vo, cont. red morocco-backed marbled boards (unimportant small & faint dampstain at head of several leaves), spine gilt. Paris: Bachelier, 1824. First edition of one of the great rarities in the history of science. This landmark book anticipated both the first and second laws of thermodynamics; it is the author’s only publication. “Using the fallible analogy of a water-wheel and the language of caloric theory the book was essentially an attempt to calculate the mechanical equivalent of heat; Carnot devised the type of apparatus afterwards used by J.P. Joule to produce exact figures in 1841. His work led directly to the enunciation of the theory of the conservation of energy by Helmholtz in 1847. In fact, in a reprint of the Réflexions in 1878, Carnot’s brother included the contents of some notebooks which showed that Carnot himself had formulated this theory, which is now the first law of thermodynamics. The second law of thermodynamics is also implicit in Carnot’s treatise. Work is done only when heat passes from a hotter to a colder body. It follows that when an equilibrium of temperature is reached work ceases.”–Printing & the Mind of Man 285. It is known that only six hundred copies of this book were printed. Fine copy. ❧ Dibner, Heralds of Science, 155. D.S.B., III, pp. 79-84. En Français dans le Texte 239.

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