Sadi Carnot summary

Sadi Carnot, (born June 1, 1796, Paris, France—died Aug. 24, 1832, Paris), French scientist, known for describing the Carnot cycle. Son of Lazare Carnot, he was an army officer most of his life. Convinced that Britain’s advanced steam engines and France’s inadequate use of steam were factors in Napoleon’s downfall, he wrote a nontechnical essay on steam engines (1824). He subsequently developed a theory of heat engines, predicting that efficiency depends only on the temperature of the hottest and coldest parts and not on the substance (steam or any other fluid) that drives the mechanism. Though adopted slowly, his theory was eventually incorporated into the general theory of thermodynamics.