656 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



bridge, Massachusetts, to attend Winthrop's lectures on "Experimen- 

 tal Philosophy." He then, after the manner of his country, " taught 

 school " at Wilmington ; and afterward became master of a school at a 

 place originally called Rumford, but subsequently rechristened Con- 

 cord, when the disputes as to the State to which it belonged were 

 finally settled, and it was ceded to New Hampshire for good and all. 



Shortly before attaining the age of twenty, Thompson, a fine, 

 handsome young man, married or, to use his own expression " was 

 married by " Mrs. Rolfe, a wealthy widow of Concord. There was 

 now no more occasion to " teach school," and Thompson hoped for 

 leisure to pursue science vigorously ; but the American Revolution 

 breaking out, he speedily found his way to England, in 1778 was 

 elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, and two years later became an 

 under-secretary of State, and colonel of the king's American Dra- 

 goons. At the conclusion of the war he was knighted by George 

 III., and, having met the Elector of Bavaria at Strasbourg, passed 

 a considerable time in Munich, busying himself in improving the 

 breed of cattle and in building workhouses, and it was in order to 

 find the most economical method of lighting the workhouse in Munich 

 that he initiated the series of experiments afterward embodied in a 

 paper on " The Relative Intensities of the Light emitted by Luminous 

 Bodies," read before the Royal Society. 



Honors now fell thickly upon the successful American. In 1785 

 he was elected member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences, and in 

 the two succeeding years was made a member of the Berlin Academy 

 of Sciences, and received the order of St. Stanislaus. Finally, Sir 

 Benjamin Thompson became Lieutenant-General of the Bavarian 

 Armies, received the order of the White Eagle, and was made a 

 Count of the Holy Roman Empire. 



After the death of his wife he traveled for sixteen months in Italy, 

 and during his stay at Verona rebuilt the kitchens of the two great 

 hospitals La Pieta and La Misericordia. Seven-eighths of the fire- 

 wood were saved, and his success in this enterprise appears to have 

 greatly encouraged Count Rumford to pursue his investigations into 

 the proper management of fuel. A curious essay written by him 

 about this time contains the mixed philanthropic and philosophic 

 germ of the Royal Institution. This is a " proposal for forming in 

 London, by private subscription, an establishment for feeding the 

 poor and giving them useful employment, and also for furnishing food 

 at a cheap rate to others who may stand in need of such assistance, 

 connected with an institution for introducing and bringing forward 

 into general use new inventions and improvements, particularly such 

 as relate to the management of heat and the saving of fuel, and to 

 various other mechanical contrivances by which domestic comfort and 

 economy may be promoted." This was followed by other essays on 

 " Food and feeding the Poor," on " Rumford Soup and Soup-Kitch- 



