The nineteenth century saw a great development of the so-called particular and more specialized sciences. This rise was largely the result of the Industrial Revolution accelerating on the European continent, and soon also reaching the United States. Another important factor driving scientific development, and its multiple applications was the performance of engineering schools, particularly the Paris Polytechnic School, founded at the end of the eighteenth century. From there came great engineers and men of science who gave a new shape to the scientific knowledge that emerged with the Scientific Revolution of the seventeenth century. We can enumerate some of these crucial scientific developments: Fourier's work on heat in 1822, Sadi Carnot creating thermodynamics in 1824, Ampère creating electrodynamics in 1826, Coriolis and Poncelet building a consistent theory for machines based on Newtonian mechanics (1829) and not least Maxwell's work in England, on electricity and magnetism (1873).