Page:Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat.djvu/53

Rh will. He took advantage of his leisure to make journeys and to visit our principal centres of industry.

He frequently visited M. Clement Desormes, professor at the Conservatoire des Arts et Metiers, who had made great advances in applied chemistry. M. Desormes willingly took counsel with him. He was a native of Bourgogne, our family country, which circumstance, I believe, brought them together.

It was before this period (in 1824) that Sadi had published his Réflexions sur la puissance motrice, du feu. He had seen how little progress had been made in the theory of machines in which this power was employed. He had ascertained that the improvements made in their arrangement were effected tentatively, and almost by chance. He comprehended that in order to raise this important art above empiricism, and to give it the rank of a science, it was necessary to study the phenomena of the production of motion by heat, from the most general point of view, independently of any mechanism, of any special agent; and such had been the thought of his life.

Did he foresee that this small brochure would become the foundation of a new science? He must have attached much importance to it to