You may have heard of the Stirling engine. It’s a pretty fascinating device; all it needs to operate is two areas fairly close together (or that can be connected) that are at different temperatures. It’s also called a “hot air” engine, and although Robert Stirling invented the modern version in 1816 (and gave it his name), the original inventor of the principle, and the person who built the first working engine, was Guillaume Amontons. And he did it in 1699. it’s Amontons birthday today.
He was born in Paris in 1663, and although he only lived to be 42, he has quite a list of accomplishments. It’s a bit surprising most people haven’t heard of him. In addition to the hot air engine, he researched the relationship between pressure and temperature in gases. He would have had a law named after him except that he never had any accurate way to measure temperature or pressure. But later scientists who did, including Jacques Charles (Charles’ law), Robert Boyle (Boyle’s law) and Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac (Gay-Lussac’s law) based their work on Amontons’.
Another way his lack of precise measurement blocked him was that he was the first to work out the principle of absolute zero, but couldn’t pinpoint the actual value. He also discovered (well, rediscovered; Leonardo da Vinci was there first, but everybody forgot) the laws of friction. If you remember high school or freshman-year physics, friction can be a bit counterintuitive, and sure enough, most people in Amontons’ time were pretty skeptical. It took until 1781 for his work to be validated by a scientist with accurate instruments: Charles-Augustin de Coulomb (Coulomb’s law).
Amontons made all his discoveries and inventions (including an optical telegraph that really worked) without the benefit of a formal education. He also had a disability; he was nearly completely deaf. He overcame those hurdles, but couldn’t surpass one major one: he was probably just born too soon.
