In the late 19th century this river adorned the landscape just outside of the laboratory of Sir William Thompson, renowned scientist and president of the Royal Society. Sir William Thompson was thenceforth known as Lord Kelvin. It is so named in honor of his discovery of the coldest possible temperature in our universe. We now know this boundary as zero Kelvin. Once this absolute zero temperature was decisively identified, prominent Victorian scientists commenced multiple independent efforts to build machines to explore this physical frontier.