COUNT BUMFORD 49 



happily until seized with a sudden and violent fever. He expired 

 August 21, 1814, in the sixty-second year of his age. 



Baron Cuvier, the count's intimate and confidential friend, per- 

 petual secretary of the French Institute, delivered the Eloge before his 

 associates, in which he said : " It is an honor to France that a man who 

 was held in such high esteem in the two most civilized continents, 

 should choose France for a final sojourn. Here fuller celebrity is most 

 surely awarded, regardless of favors of courts or the freaks of fortune." 

 Here for ten years he had been honored by Frenchmen and by for- 

 eigners. 



As a philosopher and physicist, Rumford ranks among the greatest 

 of a period that was prolific in scientific research, discovery and inven- 

 tion. Before he began his investigations, the world was in almost 

 absolute ignorance regarding the nature of heat. The metaphysical 

 philosophy of the Greeks regarding the nature of heat, which had 

 remained undisputed for two thousand years, was by Bumford over- 

 thrown and the phenomenon established on a mechanical basis. He 

 disproved the theory of an " igneous fluid," or caloric, and conclusively 

 proved that heat could not be a material body. He was the first to 

 point out that energy and heat are mutually convertible, and that both 

 are forms of motion. He was thus the founder of our modern science 

 of thermodynamics. 



While superintending the boring of brass cannons in the Arsenal 

 at Munich, his attention was drawn to the great amount of heat ac- 

 quired by the cannon and the high temperature of the brass chips. He 

 investigated the source of this heat. A blunt borer was pressed with 

 great force against the bottom of the bore hole in the cylindrical riser 

 of a brass cannon. The cannon was rotated nearly a thousand times 

 and the heat developed was sufficient to raise the whole cylinder, which 

 weighed 113 pounds, to seventy degrees, while the amount of metal 

 rubbed off by the borer was only 837 grains. He concluded that the 

 supply of heat obtained from a given quantity of metal was inex- 

 haustible, and hence heat could not be a material substance, but must 

 be " motion." 



He had a talent for inventing scientific instruments for making 

 experiments. He thus invented the photometer, an instrument for 

 measuring the relative intensity of different lights; the calorimeter, 

 for measuring the quantity of heat; the thermoscope for indicating 

 the difference of temperatures. He was an accomplished linguist, 

 speaking and writing French, German, Italian and English with equal 

 facility. 



Bumford was buried at Auteuil. His monument bears the follow- 

 ing inscription: 



vol. iiXXin. — 4. 



