Nature, in providing us with combustibles on all sides, has given us the power to produce, at all times and in all places, heat and the impelling pow… - Nicolas Carnot

The production of motive power is then due... not to an actual consumption of caloric, but to its transportation from a warm body to a cold body... to its re-establishment of equilibrium...

[W]hen a body has experienced any changes, and when after a certain number of transformations it returns to precisely its original state, that is, to that state considered in respect to density, to temperature, to mode of aggregation—let us suppose, I say, that this body is found to contain the same quantity of heat that it contained at first, or else that the quantities of heat absorbed or set free in these different transformations are exactly compensated. This fact has never been called in question. It was first admitted without reflection, and verified afterwards in many cases by experiments with the . To deny it would be to overthrow the whole theory of heat to which it serves as a basis. For the rest, we may say in passing, the main principles on which the theory of heat rests require the most careful examination. Many experimental facts appear almost inexplicable in the present state of this theory.

The maximum of motive power resulting from the employment of steam is also the maximum of motive power realizable by any means whatever.