Historical Background

Date	Event
1798	Count Rumford (Benjamin Thompson) began the quantitative study of the conversion of work into heat by means of his famous cannon-boring experiments.
1799	Sir Humphry Davy studied the conversion of work into heat by means of his ice-rubbing experiments.
1824	Sadi Carnot published his famous thesis " Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire," which includes the new concept of cycle and the principle that the reversible cyclic engine operating between two heat reservoirs depends only on the temperatures of the reservoirs and not on the working substance.
1842	Mayer postulated the principle of conservation of energy.
1847	Helmholtz formulated the principle of conservation of energy, independent of Mayer.
1843-1848	James Prescott Joule laid the experimental foundation of the first law of thermodynamics by performing experiments to establish the equivalence of work and heat. We now honor this great scientist by using J to denote the mechanical equivalent of heat.
1848	Lord Kelvin (William Thomson) defined an absolute temperature scale based on the Carnot cycle.
1850	Rudolf J. Clausius was probably the first to see that there were two basic principles: the first and second laws of thermodynamics. He also introduced the concept of U, which we now call the internal energy.
1865	Clausius stated the first and second laws of thermodynamics in two lines: 1. The energy of the universe is constant. 2. The entropy of the universe tends toward a maximum.
1875	Josiah Willard Gibbs published his monumental work " On the Equilibrium of Heterogeneous Substances," which extends thermodynamics in a general form to heterogeneous systems and chemical reactions. This work includes the important concept of chemical potential.
1897	Max Planck stated the second law of thermodynamics in the following form: "It is impossible to construct an engine which, working in a complete cycle, will produce no effect other than the raising of a weight and the cooling of a heat reservoir."
1909	Caratheodory published his structure of thermodynamics on a new axiomatic basis, which is entirely mathematical in form.

extracted from "Engineering Thermodynamics - Fundamentals and Applications"
by Francis F. Huang