MAXWELL, JAMES CLERK.

La Chaleur. Lecons Élémentaires sur la Thermometrie, la Calorimétrie, La Thermodynamique, et la Dissipation de L'Énergie. Edition francaise, d'apres la huitieme edition anglaise., par Georges Mouret. Prècédée d'une préface par M.A. Potier.

Paris, Gauthier-Villars (as a paperlabel pasted on B.Tignot), (1891).

Uncut in orig. printed wrappers. Unopened. Sewing broken on back. Nearly all of backstrip preserved. (4),IV,432 pp.Textillustrations. Scattered brownspots, mainly marginal. A good copy.

First French edition of "Theory of Heat" from 1871. The work contains the description of the so-called "sorting demon", a member of a class of "very small BUT lively beings incapable of doing work but able to open and shut valves which move without friction and inertia", and thereby defeat the second law of thermodynamics. The demon points to the statistical characyer of the law. (DSB IX, p. 227).

Order-nr.: 38564