Note 4 — III. REFLECTIONS ON THE MOTIVE POWER OF HEAT, AND ON MACHINES FITTED TO DEVELOP THAT POWER.[4]

Sadi Carnot’s Réflexions sur la puissance motrice du feu (Paris, Bachelier 1824) was long ago completely exhausted. As but a small number of copies were printed, this remarkable work remained long unknown to the earlier writers on Thermodynamics. It was therefore for the benefit of savants unable to study a work out of print, as well as to render honor to the memory of Sadi Carnot, that the new publishers of the Annales Scientifique de l’École Normale supérieure (ii. series, t. 1, 1872) published a new edition, from which this translation is reproduced.