Eugenio Beltrami's courses on the analytic and mechanical theory of heat. II. Mechanical theory of heat

In this paper, we examine unpublished notes of a course on thermodynamics delivered by Eugenio Beltrami. This course is clearly influenced by Clausius's work and aims to present thermodynamics along the lines of rational mechanics, viewed as both a sound foundation and a methodological model, where use of mathematical tools can help to understand delicate points. The course contains also some lessons on the kinetic theory of gases where Beltrami never mentions probability explicitly.