Abstract
Amontons’ widely cited paper of December 1699 on the subject of friction in machines is not the first to contain his statement of the laws of friction. An earlier paper on a novel heat engine, presented to the Académie Royale des Sciences 6 months earlier, describes the measurements of forces in glass polishing and contains a clear statement that the friction force is independent of contact area and proportional to normal load. The comments in Amontons’ paper on the physical origins of the friction force at surface irregularities (asperities) do not appear in the contemporary record of his lecture in December 1699, but were included in the published version after similar ideas had been presented by Philippe de la Hire; credit for these ideas should be given to La Hire rather than to Amontons.
Highlights
Duncan Dowson’s important book on the history of tribology[1] is the natural starting point for any tribologist wishing to learn about the origins of their subject and, together with David Tabor’s chapter published 15 years earlier,[2] was responsible for sparking my own interest
The so-called ‘laws of friction’, which state that the friction force is proportional to the normal load and independent of the apparent area of contact, are usually ascribed to Amontons, they were clearly enunciated by Leonardo da Vinci more than 200 years earlier.[4]
Guillaume Amontons’ first statement of the laws of friction was made in his paper on a novel heat engine, presented at a meeting of the Académie Royale des Sciences in June 1699, rather than in the paper on friction of December 1699 that is usually cited. Amontons based his statement on measurements of the forces involved in the polishing of glass, which demonstrated convincingly that the friction force was independent of apparent contact area, but less persuasively that it was proportional to the normal load
Summary
Duncan Dowson’s important book on the history of tribology[1] is the natural starting point for any tribologist wishing to learn about the origins of their subject and, together with David Tabor’s chapter published 15 years earlier,[2] was responsible for sparking my own interest. On 19 December, La Hire reported the results of the experiments on friction that he had initiated following Amontons’ paper in June, which Fontanelle had recorded as having caused some astonishment to the Académie.[25] The details of his experiments are provided by the minute book.[21,27] La Hire used several blocks of wood, well finished but not polished, and with surface areas in the proportions 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 He placed them on a well-finished but unpolished wooden table and loaded them all to provide the same normal load of 21⁄4 livres. He argued that the friction force would be independent of the apparent area of contact, but depend solely on the normal load
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