Page:Scientific Papers of Josiah Willard Gibbs - Volume 2.djvu/278

262 volume of the Memoirs of the Academy of Paris, describing the first part of the magnificent series of researches which the liberality of the French government enabled him to carry out for the solution of this question, was published in 1847. In the same year appeared Helmholtz's celebrated memoir, "Ueber die Erhaltung der Kraft." For some years Joule had been making those experiments which were to associate his name with 6ne of the fundamental laws of thermodynamics and one of the principal constants of nature. In 1849 he made that determination of the mechanical equivalent of heat by the stirring of water which for nearly thirty years remained the unquestioned standard. In 1848 and 1849 Sir William Thomson was engaged in developing the consequences of Carnot's theory of the motive power of heat, while Professor James Thomson in demonstrating the effect of pressure on the freezing point of water by a Carnot's cycle, showed the flexibility and the fruitfulness of a mode of demonstration which was to become canonical in thermodynamics. Meantime Rankine was attacking the problem in his own way, with one of those marvellous creations of the imagination of which it is so difficult to estimate the precise value.

Such was the state of the question when Clausius published his first memoir on thermodynamics: "Ueber die bewegende Kraft der Wärme, und die Gesetze, welche sich daraus für die Wärmelehre selbet ableiten lassen."

This memoir marks an epoch in the history of physics. If we say, in the words used by Maxwell some years ago, that thermodynamics is "a science with secure foundations, clear definitions, and distinct boundaries," and ask when those foundations were laid, those definitions fixed, and those boundaries traced, there can be but one answer. Certainly not before the publication of that memoir. The materials indeed existed for such a science, as Clausius showed by constructing it from such materials, substantially, as had for years been the common property of physicists. But truth and error were in a confusing state of mixture. Neither in France, nor in Germany, nor in Great Britain, can we find the answer to the question quoted from Regnault. The case was worse than this, for wrong answers were confidently urged by the highest authorities. That question was completely answered, on its theoretical side, in the memoir of Clausius, and the science of thermodynamics came into existence. And as Maxwell said in 1878, so it might have been said at any time since the publication of that memoir, that the foundations of the science were secure, its definitions clear, and its boundaries distinct.