Origin and History of The Idea
The thought experiment first appeared in a letter Maxwell wrote to Peter Guthrie Tait on 11 December 1867. It appeared again in a letter to John William Strutt in 1871, before it was presented to the public in Maxwell's 1871 book on thermodynamics titled Theory of Heat.
In his letters and books, Maxwell described the agent opening the door between the chambers as a "finite being". William Thomson (Lord Kelvin) was the first to use the word "demon" for Maxwell's concept, in the journal Nature in 1874, and implied that he intended the mediating, rather than malevolent, connotation of the word.
Read more about this topic: Maxwell's Demon
Famous quotes containing the words the idea, origin, history and/or idea:
“The style, which is something I take to heart, is getting on my nerves horribly. It frustrates and torments me. I have days when I am sick about it and nights when it gives me a fever. The more I go at it the more I find myself incapable of conveying the Idea.”
—Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880)
“Good resolutions are useless attempts to interfere with scientific laws. Their origin is pure vanity. Their result is absolutely nil. They give us, now and then, some of those luxurious sterile emotions that have a certain charm for the weak.... They are simply cheques that men draw on a bank where they have no account.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)
“The basic idea which runs right through modern history and modern liberalism is that the public has got to be marginalized. The general public are viewed as no more than ignorant and meddlesome outsiders, a bewildered herd.”
—Noam Chomsky (b. 1928)
“One always has the idea of a stupid man as perfectly healthy and ordinary, and of illness as making one refined and clever and unusual.”
—Thomas Mann (1875–1955)