A body which has been raised to a certain height will, if it be let fall, perform work which can be exactly measured in kilogrammetres by the product of its weight into the height it falls. Such work may be utilized in many ways. In this way, for instance, public clocks are worked. Now, as long as the clock-weight is raised and not let go, and as long as it is motionless, the physics of early days would say that there is nothing to discuss; the phenomenon is the fall; it is going to take place, but at the present moment there has been no fall.
In energetics we do not reason in this way. We say that the body possesses a capacity for work which will be manifested when the opportunity arises, a storage of energy, a virtual or potential energy, or again, an energy of position, which will be transformed into actual energy or real work as soon as the body falls.
Let us ask whence this energy arises. It proceeds from the previous operation which has raised the weight from the surface of the soil to the position it occupies. For example, if it is a question of the weights of a public clock, which, by its fall, will develop in 15 days the work that is necessary to turn the wheels, to strike the bell, and to turn the hands, this work ought to bring to our minds the exactly equal and opposite work done by the clockmaker, who has to carry the clock-weight and to lift it up from the ground to its point of departure. The work of the fall is the faithful counterpart of the work of elevation. The phenomenon has therefore in reality two phases. We find in the second exactly what was put into the first, the same quantity of energy—i.e., the same work.
