Page:Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat.djvu/39

Rh of a triple-expansion engine, a type which is to-day just coming into use, more than a half-century after Carnot's date. He recognizes the advantages of the compound engine in better distribution of pressures and in distribution of the work of expansion, but does not, of course, perceive the then undiscovered limitation of the efficiency of the simple engine, due to “cylinder condensation,” which has finally led, perhaps more than any other circumstance, to its displacement so largely by the multi-cylinder machine. No one has more exactly and plainly stated the respective advantages to be claimed for air and the gases, used as working fluids in heat-engines, than does Carnot; nor does any one to-day better recognize the difficulties which lie in the path to success in that direction, in the necessity of finding a means of handling them at high temperatures and of securing high mean pressures.

His closing paragraph shows his extraordinary foresight, and the precision with which that wonderful intellect detected the practical elements of the problem which the engineer, from the days of Savery, of Newcomen, and of Watt, has been called upon to study, and the importance of the work, which he began, in the development of a theory of the action, or of the operation, of the