330 NINETEENTH CENTURY. PT. ill. 



century, although Lord Bacon, more than two hundred 

 years before, had suggested that it was not a fluid but a 

 movement, and the philosopher Locke, in the seventeenth 

 century, and Laplace in 1780, gave the same explanation. 



Still most scientific men looked upon heat as a fluid, 

 which they called caloric, until, in the year 1798, Count Rum- 

 ford first showed by experiment that it is probably a kind of 

 motion. In following strict chronological order, this dis- 

 covery ought to have been mentioned at the end of the 

 eighteenth century, but it belongs so intimately to the modern 

 theory that it comes more naturally in this place. 



Count Rumford shows that Heat can be produced by 

 Friction, 1798. Benjamin Thompson, afterwards Count 

 Rumford, was born in the United States in 1753. He 

 spent his early life fighting in the English army against the 

 Americans, in the War of Independence, and afterwards 

 settled at Munich, and became aide-de-camp to the Elector 

 of Bavaria. In 1798 he came over to England, where he 

 was one of the founders of our Royal Institution, and finally 

 he died in Paris in 1844. 



Rumford's inquiries into the nature of heat began in 

 rather a curious way. He was very anxious to make the 

 poorer people in Bavaria happier and more prosperous, and 

 to accomplish this he persuaded the Elector of Bavaria in 

 1790, to forbid anyone to beg in the streets. Those who 

 could not find work for themselves were taken up and kept 

 in a kind of workhouse, where they were given good food 

 and clothing, but were forced to work to pay for their own 

 support. When this law was first passed, there were no 

 less than 2,500 beggars to be provided for, and Rumford 

 was obliged to calculate very closely how he could find 

 food and clothing, heat and light, for the least money. 



