It's not quite the same thing, but I think it was Joule who measured the temperature of the water at the top and bottom of a waterfall, and found that it was warmer at the bottom because the kinetic energy of the water was converted to heat energy. We did a similar experiment at school (45 years ago). We had a tube made of good insulating material (I'm pretty sure it was a length asbestos drain-pipe!) about two metres long. We had some lead shot, which we put into the tube, then sealed both ends. We inverted the tube many times, then opened it and measured the temperature rise of the lead shot. Knowing how many times we had inverted the tube, we knew the total distance fallen by the shote, and so worked aut a value for the mechanical equivalent of heat.