James Joule |
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In 1843 he announced that he had measured 'the mechanical equivalent of heat' (the amount of mechanical work needed to produce a given amount of heat) in a paper to the British Association for the Advancement of Science. He was again ignored. It was not until 1847 that William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) endorsed his findings. In 1849, a paper entitled 'On the Mechanical Equivalent of Heat' was read to the Royal Society and in 1844 they published it. Joule was finally recognized and elected as a member of the Society. |
Joule was born in
England on Dec 24, 1818. A sickly child, he was home-schooled
until 15 when his father became ill. He then went to manage the
family brewery but continued his education with a famous private
tutor named John Dalton. He set up a lab at home and experimented
before and after work. In 1840 he sent his first paper, 'On
the Production of Heat by Voltaic Electricity' to the Royal
Society in London. The Society published only a brief summary.