Page:Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat.djvu/167

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MOTIVE POWER OF HEAT.
143

height EE1, to a position E1F1, performing work by the pressure of the vapor below it during its ascent.

[During this operation a certain quantity, H, of heat, the amount of latent heat in the fresh vapor which is formed, is abstracted from the body A.]

(2) The cylinder being removed, and placed on the impermeable stand K, let the piston rise gradually, till, when it reaches a position E2F2, the temperature of the water and vapor is T, the same as that of the body B.

[During this operation the fresh vapor continually formed requires heat to become latent; and, therefore, as the contents of the cylinder are protected from any accession of heat, their temperature sinks.]

(3) The cylinder being removed from K, and placed on B, let the piston be pushed down, till, when it reaches the position E2F2, the quantity of heat evolved and abstracted by B amounts to that which, during the first operation, was taken from A.

[Note of Nov. 5, 1881. The specification of this operation, with a view to the return to the primitive condition, intended as the conclusion to the four operations, is the only item in which Carnot's temporary and provisional assumption of the materiality of heat has effect. To exclude this hypothesis, Prof. James Thomson has suggested the fol-