Page:Lectures on Ten British Physicists of the Nineteenth Century.djvu/31

 large bonfire on the top of Arthur's Seat, a precipitous rock which rises 700 feet above the level of the park surrounding the palace. To Rankine was entrusted the engineering of this bonfire. Applying his knowledge of chemistry he constructed the pile of fuel with radiating air passages underneath.

It was now, when he was 22 years of age, that he published his first scientific pamphlet "An experimental inquiry into the advantage of cylindrical wheels on railways." The course of experiments was suggested by his father, and was carried out by father and son working together. It was followed by a series of papers on subjects suggested by his father's railroad experience; of which one was on the "Fracture of axles." He showed that such fractures arose from gradual deterioration or fatigue, involving the gradual extension inwards of a crack originating at a square-cut shoulder. In this paper the importance of continuity of form and fiber was first shown, and the hypothesis of spontaneous crystallization was disproved. His father was connected with the Caledonian Railway Company, and by that Company young Rankine was professionally employed on various schemes. The work in Ireland had impressed on him the great importance of an abundant supply of pure water to the health of a city. He brought forward a scheme for supplying the city of Edinburgh with water from a lake in the hilly region to the south; a scheme which was thorough and would have solved the problem once and for all. It was defeated by the existing Water Company, with the result that to this day the water supply of the city of Edinburgh is defective.

While engaged in engineering work in Ireland, he had thought much on the mechanical nature of heat, a doctrine which was then engaging the attention of the scientific world. In reading the Principia of Newton, Rankine must have observed how the action of heat was a difficulty in the theory of Dynamics. In France, Carnot had in 1820 given a theory of the heat-engine which assumed that heat was a material substance. Mayer had advanced the theory that heat is a mode of motion. Rankine to explain the pressure and expansion of gaseous