Editing Maxwell's demon (section)

== Origin and history of the idea ==
The [[thought experiment]] first appeared in a letter [[James Clerk Maxwell|Maxwell]] wrote to [[Peter Guthrie Tait]] on 11 December 1867. It appeared again in a letter to [[John William Strutt]] in 1871, before it was presented to the public in Maxwell's 1872 book on thermodynamics titled ''Theory of Heat''.<ref name="Leff">[[#Leff Rex 02|Leff & Rex (2002)]], p. 370.</ref>

In his letters and books, Maxwell described the agent opening the door between the chambers as a "finite being". Being a deeply religious man, he never used the word "demon". Instead, [[William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin|William Thomson (Lord Kelvin)]] was the first to use it for Maxwell's concept, in the journal ''[[Nature (journal)|Nature]]'' in 1874, and implied that he intended the [[Greek mythology]] interpretation of a [[Daimon|daemon]], a supernatural being working in the background, rather than a malevolent being.<ref name="Aiv9S">{{cite journal|first=William|last=Thomson|date=9 April 1874|title=Kinetic theory of the dissipation of energy|journal=[[Nature (journal)|Nature]]|volume=9|issue=232|pages=441–444|doi=10.1038/009441c0|bibcode=1874Natur...9..441T|author-link=William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin|doi-access=free}}</ref><ref name="Tqxmq">{{cite journal|year=1879|title=The sorting demon of Maxwell|journal=Nature|volume=20|issue=501|pages=126|bibcode=1879Natur..20Q.126.|doi=10.1038/020126a0|doi-access=free}}</ref><ref name="Weber">{{cite book|first=Alan S.|last=Weber|year=2000|title=Nineteenth Century Science: a Selection of Original Texts|publisher=[[Broadview Press]]|page=300}}</ref>