History
In 1679, physicist Denis Papin conceived the idea of using steam to power a piston and cylinder engine, by watching a steam release valve of a bone-digester rhythmically move up and down. In 1698, based on Papin’s designs, mechanical designer Thomas Savery built the first engine. The first scientific treatise on the energetics of engines was the 1824 paper: Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire written by French physicist Sadi Carnot.
As an example, the Newcomen engine of 1711 was able to replace a team of 500 horses that had “powered” a wheel to pump water out of a mine, i.e. to “move” buckets of water vertically out of a mine. Hence, we have the precursory model to the term motive power. Based on this model, in 1832, Carnot defined work as “weight lifted through a height”, being the very same definition used to this day.
Read more about this topic: Motive Power
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Certainly there is not the fight recorded in Concord history, at least, if in the history of America, that will bear a moment’s comparison with this, whether for the numbers engaged in it, or for the patriotism and heroism displayed.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“[Men say:] “Don’t you know that we are your natural protectors?” But what is a woman afraid of on a lonely road after dark? The bears and wolves are all gone; there is nothing to be afraid of now but our natural protectors.”
—Frances A. Griffin, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 19, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“Every generation rewrites the past. In easy times history is more or less of an ornamental art, but in times of danger we are driven to the written record by a pressing need to find answers to the riddles of today.... In times of change and danger when there is a quicksand of fear under men’s reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations gone before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present and get us past that idiot delusion of the exceptional Now that blocks good thinking.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)