The book adheres to a chronological development of the laws of thermodynamics as the inventors of those laws discovered them. This shows that "new" discoveries of non-optimal efficiencies are not new at all and have been analyzed by people like Lord Kelvin as far back as 1852 in his analysis of an unevenly heated body.
More than to any other single individual, thermodynamics owes its creation to Nicolas-L´eonard-Sadi Carnot. Sadi, the son of the “great Carnot” Lazare, was heavily influenced by his father. Not only was LazareMinister ofWar during Napoleon’s consulate, he was a respected mathematician and engineer in his own right. Mathematically, Lazare can lay claim to the definition of the cross ratio, a projective invariant of four points. Lazare was also interested in how machines operated, emphasizing the roles of work and “vis viva,” or living force, which was later to be associated with the kinetic energy. He arrived at a dynamical theory that machines in order to operate at maximum efficiency should avoid “any impact or sudden change.” This was the heritage he left to his son Sadi.
