Origins
The word enthalpy is based on the Greek word enthalpos (ἔνθαλπος), which means to put heat into. It comes from the Classical Greek prefix ἐν-, en-, meaning to put into, and the verb θάλπειν, thalpein, meaning "to heat". The word enthalpy is often incorrectly attributed to Benoit Paul Émile Clapeyron and Rudolf Clausius through the 1850 publication of their Clausius-Clapeyron relation. This misconception was popularized by the 1927 publication of The Mollier Steam Tables and Diagrams. However, neither the concept, the word, nor the symbol for enthalpy existed until well after Clapeyron's death.
The earliest writings to contain the concept of enthalpy did not appear until 1875, when Josiah Willard Gibbs introduced "a heat function for constant pressure". However, Gibbs did not use the word "enthalpy" in his writings. Instead, the word "enthalpy" first appears in the scientific literature in a 1909 publication by J. P. Dalton. According to that publication, Heike Kamerlingh Onnes (1853-1926) actually coined the word.
Over the years, many different symbols were used to denote enthalpy. It was not until 1922 that Alfred W. Porter proposed the symbol "H" as the accepted standard, thus finalizing the terminology still in use today.
Read more about this topic: Enthalpy
Famous quotes containing the word origins:
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