194 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol, XVIII, No. 452 



cal instruction, which are attracting much attention in Great 

 Britain and Germany. 



We believe Meyer's " History of Chemistry," standing as it does 

 alone, should be much used hy teachers and students. 



A Manual of the Steam Engine. Part I. : Structure and Theory. 

 By Robert H. Thurston. New York, Wiley. 8°. |7..50. 



It has been a commouslur at the thermo-organio theory of heat- 

 engines that it has led to little of the improvement in their con- 

 struction. It is well known that the thermo-dynamics of the 

 steam-engine was not understood, or at least generally recognized, 

 till the best part of a century had passed after the first introduc- 

 tion of the engine as a practical motive power. But even then 

 the theory applied only to an ideal engine —an engine consisting 

 of a few diagramatic lines called a "hot body," a "cold body," 

 etc., and known as the Carnot engine. That this theoretical ex- 

 planation of the working of the heat engine is of the greatest 

 interest, and has certainly aided materially in clearing engineers' 

 ideas as to the possibilities of the heat-engine, cannot be denied ; 

 but there are so many differences between the Carnot engine and 

 the steam-engine of practice that the improvement of the latter 

 has been forced to depend on the "rule of thumb" for guidance. 



Professor Thurston, in this book, makes an attempt to carry the 

 theory forward a step and put it in such shape as to be applicable 

 to the real engine. He does not maintain that this can as yet be 

 done with perfect satisfaction, but only that sufficient knowledge 



of the various wastes of heat has been obtained to justify this 

 treatise. The subject is still obscure, but it is believed that the 

 provisional theory and purposed processes of computation will aid 

 the engineer materially in his endeavor to anticipate the perfor- 

 mance of any new engine, the design of which may be hand. 



Cotterill's "The Steam-Engine considered as a Heat-Engine" 

 was perhaps an earlier attempt in the same direction, and with 

 the progress of experimental work at the numerous technical in- 

 stitutions the world over, modifications in Thurston's treatment 

 must bo called for. 



Tbis first part covers the structure and theory of the steam-en- 

 gine ; the second part will be devoted to the design, construction, 

 and operation. 



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