Hirn, Gustave Adolfe

(b. Logelbach, near Colmar, France, 21 August 1815; d. Colmar [then Germany], 14 January 1890)

thermodynamics.

Despite his name and inclusion in German biographical works, Hirn must be considered a Frenchman, having been born in Alsace before the annexation to Germany (1871), and having published almost exclusively in French journals. Furthermore, he must not be confused with his older brother Charles Ferdinand, inventor of the wire-rope power transmission, which Hirn perfected. The brothers, sons of a calico factory owner, were educated at home by a tutor. Hirn received some additional instruction in chemistry and physics, which he augmented through independent study. The brother became technical directors of a mill of which the princial power source was a Boulton & Watt engine built in 1824. In the process of modernizing and meeting the necessity of driving machinery in separate buildings with the power of one engine, C. F. Hirn devised the wire-rope power transmission—the telodynamic system—an important industrial element in the latter half of the nineteenth century.

Hirn, in charge of the mechanical department, improved the economy of the steam plant by using flue gases to heat the boiler feedwater. Extensive experiments on friction, occasioned by the many lubrication problems of the mill machinery, led to the introduction of the use of mineral oil, formerly considered unfit for machinery, and the establishment of a small machine-oil business.

Hirn became one of the first to investigate the internal phenomena of the steam engine. He had five engines at his disposal, including two of about 100 horsepower—a Woolf compound and a single-cylinder machine. In 1847 he discovered the mechanical equivalent of heat (later than, but independently of, J. R. Mayer and Joule, whose priorities of 1842 and 1843 he acknowledged).

In continuing work directed at increasing the efficiency of the mill engine, Hirn established the first heat balance (1857). He showed the beneficial advantage of superheat over dry saturated steam in reducing cylinder condensation; the calculation is still known as Hirn’s analysis. Furthermore, he convinced skeptics of the advantage of steam-jacketing cylinders, a practice that had been discontinued when pressures, temperatures, and speeds had risen significantly above those of Watt’s era: he proved decisively that cylinder walls were active “thermal reservoirs.” Hirn’s Exposition analytique et expérimentale de la théorie meécanique de la chaleur (1862) was among the first systematic treatises on thermodynamics.

Hirn’s activity was not limited to thermodynamics; the climatology and meteorology of Alsace were an intertest of his later years. Before the Franco-Prussian War he had established a number of weather stations that reported to him. After his retirement in 1880, he was able to resume this work through support from the Institut de France, instrumentation for the major obsrvatory atop his house being furnished by the Ministry of Public Works in Paris. Astronomy also engaged him, a paper on Saturn’s rings causing much discussion.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. Hirn’s writinigs include Recherches sur l’équivalent meécanique de la chaleur (Colmar, 1868), repr. in Keller (see below), p. 29; Analyse élémentaire de l’univers (Paris, 1868); “La musique et l’acoustique,” in Revue d’Alsace (1875); Thermodynamique (Paris, 1881); La vie future et la science moderne (Paris, 1882); and constitution de l’escape céleste (Paris, 1889).

He also published many articles in Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l’Académie des sciences; Bulletin de la Société industrielle de Mulhouse; Bulletin de l’Académie r. de Belgique. Classe des sciences; Journal universel de la littérature, des sciences et des arts (Brussels); Gaea; and Bulletin de la Société d’histoire naturelle de Colmar

II. Secondary Literature Biographies and obituaries of varying length are Dwelschauvers-Dery, “Reminiscences of the Life of G. A. Hirn,” in Engineering49 (1890), 120–121, 174–175; “G. A. Hirm,” in Engineer, 69 (1890), 231–234; A. slaby, “John Ericsson und Gustav Adolf Hirn” in Zeitschrift des Vereins deutscher Ingenieure, 34 (1890), 1161–1168; “Gustav Adolf Hirm,” ibid 232–233; Keller, “Gustav Adolf Hirn, sein Leben und seine Werke,” in C. Matschoss, ed., Beiträzur Geshichte der Technik und Industrie, III (berlin, 1911), 20–60; and C. Matschoss, Männer der Technik (Düsseldorf, 1925), p. 117.

R. S. Hartenberg