THE EXPERIMENTS THAT ESTABLISHED THE PRESERVATION OF ENERGY

COLDING, LUDVIG AUGUST.

Undersögelse om de almindelige Naturkræfter og deres gjensidige Afhængighed og i særdeleshed om den ved visse faste Legemers Gnidning udviklede Varme [Survey on the Universal Forces of Nature and their Mutial Dependence and especially about the Heat that Emerges from the Friction of Certain Bodies]. + Om Magnetens Indvirkning paa blödt Jern [On the Effect of the MAgnet on Soft Iron]. + Om de almindelige Naturkræfter og deres gjensidige Afhængighed [On the Universal Forces of Nature and their Mutial Dependence]. [Extract from: Vidensk. Selsk. Skr., 5 Række, naturv. og math. Afd. 2 Bind.]

Copenhagen. 1850. 4to. Uncut and unopened. No wrappers. Plates loose. Very nice and clean. Pp. (121) - 188 + four plates.

First edition of these absolutely fundamental papers, by the (co-)discoverer of the principle of Conservation of Energy, prove Colding's assumption of "the imperishability of nature" and present for the first time in printing his elaborate experiments on the subject, contributing significantly to the cementation of his version of the principle of Conservation of Energy.

Ludvig August Colding (1815 - 1888) was a famous Danish engineer and physicist. He was originally educated as a carpenter but graduated as mechanical engineer in 1841. In 1845 he became water-inspector in Copenhagen and in 1847 he was also given the responsibility of the gas- and waterworks. Together with the famous chemist Julius Thomsen, he proved that the cholera spread throughout Copenhagen through the drinking water (1853) - a most significant discovery. After this he was responsible replacing much of the sewer-system of Copenhagen. In 1857 he became state engineer. During this period he overhauled the desperately inadequate water and sanitation system. He articulated the principle of conservation of energy contemporaneously with, and independently of, James Prescott Joule and Julius Robert von Mayer though his contribution was largely overlooked and neglected.

His work on the power of water-stem in the steam engine is considered one of his most significant.

The principle of Conservation of Energy was discovered and proven independently and practically simultaneously by Colding, Meyer, Joule, and Helmholtz. As the other three, Colding had discovered the principle in the early 1840'ies, but up until 1843 (where he publishes his first breakthrough article on the subject), Colding's experiments had suggested that no force seems to be disappearing but merely undergoes a transformation, whereupon it becomes effective in other forms. On H.C. Oersted's recommendation (Colding was Oersted's assistent in their experiments with the heating of compressed water), however, Colding carried out a more elaborate version of his experiments, which made him able to verify his assumption that led to his principle of Conservation of Energy with much greater certainty. These new results were reported at the 1847 meeting of Scandinavian Scientists and published in 1850 as the two first papers present here.

Mayer's famous "Bemerkungen über das mechanische Aequivalent der Wärme" was published a year after Colding's papers, 1851.

Order-nr.: 42141