XXI 



COUNT RUMFORD 



1753-1814 



Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, was born in Wohiirn, 

 Massachusetts, March 26, 1753, a member of an old Nezv England 

 family. After a very romantic youth and early manhood in which he 

 underwent many exciting adventures as a British loyalist at the time 

 of the American Revolution, he zvas sent to England with despatches 

 by the British expeditionary authorities and there found employ- 

 ment in the office of the Secretary of State. After the close of the 

 Revolution he went to Bavaria, where he became Minister of War 

 and Grand Chamberlain. In i/pi he was made a count of the Holy 

 Roman Empire. In 1796 President Adams invited hinv to return 

 to America to become an inspector of artillery, but he declined; and 

 at about the same time he became interested in problems of heat, 

 light, and fuel. His suggestions ultimately became the basis for the 

 doctrine of the conservation of energy. He died at Auteuil, Au- 

 gust 2j, 181 4. 



THE NATURE OF HEAT * 



After I had long meditated upon a way of putting this interesting 

 problem entirely out of doubt by a perfectly conclusive experiment, I 

 thought finally that I had discovered it, and I think so still. 



I argued that if the existence of caloric was a fact, it must be abso- 

 lutely impossible for a body or for several individual bodies, w^hich 

 together made one whole, to communicate this substance continuously 

 to various other bodies by which they were surrounded, without this 

 substance gradually being entirely exhausted. 



* From An Enquiry Concerning the Source of Heat Excited by Friction 

 (1798) — Transactions of the Royal Society of London. 



157 



