Page:Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat.djvu/163

Rh of the thermal agency is wasted. Hence it is of primary importance to discover the criterion of a perfect engine. This has been done by Carnot, who proves the following proposition:

13. A perfect thermodynamic engine is such that, whatever amount of mechanical effect it can derive from a certain thermal agency, if an equal amount be spent in working it backwards, an equal reverse thermal effect will be produced.

14. This proposition will be made clearer by the applications of it which are given later (§ 29), in the cases of the air-engine and the steam-engine, than it could be by any general explanation; and it will also appear, from the nature of the operations described in those cases, and the principles of Carnot's reasoning, that a perfect engine may be constructed with any substance of an indestructible texture as the alternately expanding and contracting medium. Thus we might conceive thermodynamic engines founded upon the expansions and contractions of a perfectly elastic solid, or of a liquid; or upon the alterations of volume experienced by substances in passing from the liquid to the solid state, each of which being perfect, would