On the Saturation Pressures of Steam (170 $ ^{\circ} $ to 374 $ ^{\circ} $ C)

The efforts which are being made through the agency of the International Steam Tables Conferences to co-ordinate investigations on steam, and to set down its measured properties in a series of tables and figures which shall be within agreed limits of error, and consistent with each other thermodynamically, cannot very well succeed, unless it be proved that steam is consistent in its behaviour. If there are differences, for instance, traceable to the time required for the constituent molecules of steam to reach an equilibrium state, then it might be difficult to achieve concordance between measurements of the properties of steam carried out by different methods. If, on the other hand, no such differences are exhibited, then it would seem that it is only a matter of care and of time to achieve a set of tables which shall represent the true behaviour of steam and which can be brought within a thermodynamically consistent scheme.