840 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



drive a dynamo-electric machine producing the electric light, more 

 than twice as much light will be developed as would be obtained if 

 the oil that runs the engine were burned in the ordinary coal-oil lamps. 

 How much greater would be the economy if the energy of the oil could 

 be converted directly into the energy of the electric current ! 



For warming buildings, the furnace would become an electric gen- 

 erator, from which wires, instead of pipes for steam or hot air, would 

 lead to the rooms to be heated, when, by interposing a suitable resist- 

 ance, the energy of the current would be converted into heat. The 

 probability of being able to convert the energy due to combustion of 

 fuel into electric instead of heat energy may be very small ; but it is 

 at least a possibility ; that is, there is no known reason in the nature 

 of things why it can not be done, while it is demonstrated that the 

 whole of the energy of heat can not be converted into mechanical effect, 

 except by means of a refrigerator at a temperature of nearly 500 

 below that at which water freezes a temperature which has never 

 yet been reached, and which it is impossible to obtain with our pres- 

 ent surroundings, except by an expenditure of energy equal to that 

 which would be gained. 



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SKETCH OF GEORGE BOOLE. 



A ND pray who is George Boole, that he should be pictured and 

 -^- sketched in ' The Popular Science Monthly ' ? We thought 

 this department was to be devoted to scientific celebrities, chiefly con- 

 temporaneous ; but who is this Boole ? " 



Such will probably be the exclamation of nine of our readers out 

 of ten ; but the tenth, or more safely the hundredth, reader will know 

 that George Boole was a man of a very high order of genius, a pro- 

 found and most original thinker of this century, who will be known in 

 future by his contributions to mathematical and logical science. Yet 

 he can never be widely known, for his work was so recondite that those 

 who can properly appreciate it will always be but very few. We 

 gather the following particulars of his life from the last edition of the 

 " Encyclopaedia Britannica " : 



George Boole was born in Lincoln, on the 2d of November, 1815. 

 His father was a tradesman of limited means, but of studious charac- 

 ter and active mind. Being especially interested in mathematical sci- 

 ence, the father gave his son early insti-uction in the rudiments of the 

 science he was so greatly to advance ; but it is remarkable that the 

 extraordinary mathematical powers of George Boole did not manifest 

 themselves in early life, as was the case with Zerah Colburn, Babbage, 

 Pascal, Leibnitz, and Saunderson. The classical languages formed at 

 first the favorite subject of his studies. It was not until he had at- 



