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Between Thermodynamics and Thermometry: The Life and Scientific Achievements of Hugh Longbourne Callendar

This paper considers Hugh Longbourne Callendar’s role in the developments of thermometry and thermodynamics during the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth century. Callendar applied the physical principle of the variation of electrical conductivity with temperature to the construction of the resistance thermometer. These works opened the door to his later successful studies on steam properties, which led him to become one of the pioneers in the determination of a set of consistent, accurate, and standardized thermodynamic values for water. The article briefly reviews the state of the art of both subjects before Callendar’s contributions and some of the consequences of his work for the later development of those disciplines. Callendar’s qualities as experimenter, theoretical scientist, and as a human being, are also discussed.

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Notes

  1. Thermal hysteresis refers to the dependence of a physical quantity not only on the temperature but also on its preceding thermal history.

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Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Sara Hale, assistant archivist of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (EIT); Anne Barrett, college archivist and corporate records manager at the Imperial College; Terry Rogers, honorary archivist of Marlborough College; and Jonathan Smith of the Trinity College Library, Cambridge, for their great help in the preparation of my paper and for their kind permission to reproduce some of the photographs in it. I would also like to thank Professors Neil White, head of electronics and computer science at the University of Southampton for providing a photograph of one of Callendar’s medals and Oldřich Šifner, from the Institute of Thermomechanics at the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, for providing a photograph of the group of assistants to the First International Steam-Table Conference held in London in 1929. The valuable contributions of Lorna Cahill and Bridget Gillies, Archives Assistants of Royal Holloway at the University of London and University of East Anglia, respectively, are also much appreciated. I also thank the anonymous reviewers on a draft of this paper and the editorial staff of Physics in Perspective for its meticulous, thoughtful, and helpful editorial work on my paper.

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Correspondence to Simón Reif-Acherman.

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Simón Reif-Acherman is titular professor in the School of Chemical Engineering at the Universidad del Valle in Cali, Colombia. His research interests are in the history of physics, chemistry, and technology.

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Reif-Acherman, S. Between Thermodynamics and Thermometry: The Life and Scientific Achievements of Hugh Longbourne Callendar. Phys. Perspect. 17, 198–235 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00016-015-0166-8

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Keywords

  • Hugh Longbourne Callendar
  • thermodynamics
  • thermometry
  • electrical conductivity
  • steam tables
  • Board of Invention and Research