Page:Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat.djvu/31

Rh takes the amount of power required to exert an energy equal to that needed to raise one cubic meter of water through a height of one meter, as his unit; this is 1000 kilogrammeters, taken as his unit of motive power; while he says that this is the equivalent of 2.7 of his units of heat; which latter quantity would be destroyed in its production of this amount of power, or rather work. His unit of heat is thus seen to be 1000 ÷ 2.7, or 370 kilogrammeters. This is almost identical with the figure obtained by Mayer, more than ten years later, and from presumably the same approximate physical data, the best then available, in the absence of a Regnault to determine the exact values. Mayer obtained 365, a number which the later work of Regnault enabled us to prove to be 15 per cent, too low, a conclusion verified experimentally by the labors of Joule and his successors. Carnot was thus a discoverer of the equivalence of the units of heat and work, as well as the revealer of the principles which have come to be known by his name. Had he lived a little longer, there can be little doubt that he would have established the facts, as well as the principles, by convincing proof. His early death frustrated his designs, and deprived the