“For eighteen years it has pressed”: Kelvin 1864. The paper was read on April 28, 1862.

Kelvin’s first papers on the topics of heat: Kelvin made numerous contributions to thermodynamics. In 1844 he had a paper on the “age” of temperature distributions. Basically, he showed that a temperature distribution measured at the present can be the result only of a heat distribution that existed some finite time into the past. In 1848 he devised the absolute temperature scale that bears his name. In an 1851 paper entitled “On the Dynamical Theory of Heat,” he formulated one version of what is known today as the second law of thermodynamics.

“To suppose, as Lyell”: Kelvin 1864.

the French physicist Joseph Fourier: A good description of the development of the theory of thermal conductivity can be found in Narasimhan 2010.

Kelvin believed that he could state: Kelvin admitted that “we are very ignorant as to the effects of high temperatures in altering the conductivities and specific heats of rocks, and as to their latent heat of fusions.” These types of uncertainties ended up playing an important role in his blunder.