Abstract
IN several papers published between 1848 and 1854, Lord Kelvin1 proposed the establishment of an absolute scale of temperature, based on Carnot's principle and “quite independent of the physical properties of any specific substance”. On such a scale “the absolute values of two temperatures are to one another in the proportion of the heat taken in to the heat rejected in a perfect thermodynamic engine working with a source and a refrigerator at the higher and lower of the temperatures respectively”.
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GIAUQUE, W. A Proposal to Redefine the Thermodynamic Temperature Scale: with a Parable of Measures to Improve Weights. Nature 143, 623–625 (1939). https://doi.org/10.1038/143623a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/143623a0