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Clapeyron, Bénoit Paul Émile 1799-1864
French civil engineer

Born in Paris, he was educated at the École Polytechnique and the École des Mines. After some time in Russia he returned to France and was principally engaged in the construction of railways and bridges, including the design of locomotives, where he was the first to make use of the expansive action of steam in the cylinder. For the analysis of beams resting on more than two supports he developed the 'Theorem of Three Moments', and in 1834 published an exposition of Sadi Carnot's classic but previously neglected paper on the power and efficiency of various types of heat engine, Réflexions sur la puissance motrice du feu (1824, Eng trans Reflections on the Motive Powers of Fire, 1890). Clapeyron was elected to the French Academy of Sciences in 1858.