'The contact theory,'
he urged, 'assumed that a force which is able to overcome powerful
resistance, as for instance that of the conductors, good or bad,
through which the current passes, and that again of the electrolytic
action where bodies are decomposed by it, can arise out of nothing;
that, without any change in the acting matter, or the consumption of
any generating force, a current shall be produced which shall go on
for ever against a constant resistance, or only be stopped, as in
the voltaic trough, by the ruins which its exertion has heaped up in
its own course. This would indeed be a creation of power, and is
like no other force in nature. We have many processes by which the
form of the power may be so changed, that an apparent conversion of
one into the other takes place. So we can change chemical force
into the electric current, or the current into chemical force.
The beautiful experiments of Seebeck and Peltier show the convertibility
of heat and electricity; and others by Oersted and myself show the
convertibility of electricity and magnetism. But in no case, not
even in those of the Gymnotus and Torpedo, is there a pure creation
or a production of power without a corresponding exhaustion of
something to supply it.'
These words were published more than two years before either Mayer
printed his brief but celebrated essay on the Forces of Inorganic
Nature, or Mr. Joule published his first famous experiments on the
Mechanical Value of Heat.
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