Axioms for Energy and Entropy

Abstract

The paper of Reech, extracted in 1851 and published in 1853, laid out the entire formal thermodynamics of “reversible” processes in homogeneous fluid bodies. Almost every equation ever obtained in that theory either is in Reech’s paper or is an immediate corollary of equations in that paper. Nevertheless, the generality of Reech’s results is in part illusory. Indeed, they do cover all of Carnot’s theory and all of Clausius’, and every other possibility consistent with Carnot’s General Axiom, but also, since Reech did not obtain the central result given above as Theorem 10, the formulae he derived allow possibilities that Carnot’s General Axiom forbids.