Yudkowsky is correct. The advance that made the steam engine useful was Watt’s separate condenser. The separate condenser was based on the research of Joseph Black, who did much of the work of quantifying thermodynamics. Black was a close friend of Watt, lent Watt money to finance his R&D, and introduced Watt to his first business partner John Roebuck.
Before Watt, the early, crude steam engines like Savery’s and Newcomen’s were preceded by early, crude research on pressure from scientists like Papin. These engines were niche tools with only one narrow economically-useful application (pumping water out of mines).
The linked article is completely wrong in claiming Carnot’s work was the “First Stirrings of Thermodynamics”, and wrong in treating Watt’s invention of the separate condenser as a sideshow.
Black’s development of specific heat capacity and latent heat is widely attested, including in the Wikipedia articles on Black and on the history of thermodynamics. I don’t recall where I first saw the claim.
Yudkowsky is correct. The advance that made the steam engine useful was Watt’s separate condenser. The separate condenser was based on the research of Joseph Black, who did much of the work of quantifying thermodynamics. Black was a close friend of Watt, lent Watt money to finance his R&D, and introduced Watt to his first business partner John Roebuck.
Before Watt, the early, crude steam engines like Savery’s and Newcomen’s were preceded by early, crude research on pressure from scientists like Papin. These engines were niche tools with only one narrow economically-useful application (pumping water out of mines).
The linked article is completely wrong in claiming Carnot’s work was the “First Stirrings of Thermodynamics”, and wrong in treating Watt’s invention of the separate condenser as a sideshow.
Can you show me where you got the factoid that Joseph Black quantified thermodynamics before Carnot?
Black’s development of specific heat capacity and latent heat is widely attested, including in the Wikipedia articles on Black and on the history of thermodynamics. I don’t recall where I first saw the claim.