On the Conversion of Heat into Work

Abstract

VERY few modern books on Engineering contain what can truly be called accurate science; one of whose special characteristics is the use of each term in one definite sense only. In other words, take at random a work on any branch of Engineering, and you find, in every page, more than one sentence which, if it be read as a scientific statement, is simply inaccurate. Of the exceptional works the majority consist of those written by the late Prof. Rankine. He seems to have left no successor, so far as this department of applied science is concerned; and the book before us strongly supports the notion. It gives, in a succinct but comprehensive form, an introduction to the modern Dynamical Theory of Heat, treated almost entirely from the practical Engineer's point of view. It is obviously written by a man who knows his subject, and it is therefore presumably written in terms intellìgible to those for whom it is designed. It thus affords a good opportunity of making some further remarks upon the strange line of separation which has unfortunately been drawn between the vocabularies (or, rather, the dictionaries) of Pure and of Applied Science. In using this opportunity, for the purpose stated, we do not attack the present work in particular; we attack the mass of works on Engineering, of which it is a high-class specimen.

On the Conversion of Heat into Work.

By W. Anderson, M.Inst.C.E. (London: Whittaker and Co., and George Bell and Sons, 1887.)