702 TECHNICAL CHEMISTRY 



(175 1-1814) ,* whose studies in heat and fuel were as practical as they were 

 important. His early knowledge of science was acquired from John Winthrop 

 (1717-1779), who held the chair of mathematics and natural philosophy at Har- 

 vard from 1738 till his death. Of Count Rumford I have said elsewhere: 2 " He 

 investigated the properties and management of heat, and the amount of it that 

 was produced by the combustion of different kinds of fuel, by means of a calori- 

 meter of his own invention." By reconstructing the fireplace he so improved the 

 methods of warming apartments and cooking food that a saving of fuel of almost 

 one half was effected. He improved the construction of stoves, cooking-ranges, 

 coal-grates, and chimneys, and showed that the non-conducting power of cloth is 

 due to the air that is inclosed in its fibers. Silliman well says of him: " No writer 

 of his time has left a nobler record of original power in physical science than Rum- 

 ford." It will also be remembered that by will he provided funds " to teach by 

 regular courses of academical and public lectures, accompanied by proper experi- 

 ments, the utility of the physical and mathematical sciences for the improvement 

 of the useful arts, and for the extension of the industry, prosperity, happiness, and 

 well-being of society." 3 Let me also remind you that Wolcott Gibbs, the oldest 

 and now the Nestor of American chemists, held the Rumford chair in the Law- 

 rence Scientific School of Harvard from 1863 till 1888, during which time many 

 of those who are now leaders in chemistry were students under him. 



The last century was only a year old when Robert Hare (1781-1858) commu- 

 nicated his discovery of the oxyhydrogen blowpipe to the Chemical Society of 

 Philadelphia. This instrument held a foremost place for the production of arti- 

 ficial heat until the recent introduction of the electric furnace. The application of 

 the principle invented by Hare still finds extensive use for lighthouse illumination 

 and similar purposes under the names of " Drumond light " and " calcium light." 

 It is interesting to recall in this connection that Hare was the first to receive the 

 Rumford medals from the Academy of Arts and Sciences. 



Hare was also the inventor in 1816 of a calorimotor, a form of battery by which 

 a large amount of heat was generated, and four years later he modified this appara- 

 tus, with which, then known as Hare's deflagrator, in 1823 he first demonstrated 

 the volatilization and fusion of carbon. His memoir on the Explosiveness of 

 Niter, which was published by the Smithsonian Institution in 1850, was one of the 

 earliest contributions by an American to the literature of explosives. 4 



The original discovery of chloroform is clearly of American origin and must be 

 credited to Samuel Guthrie (1782-1848), of Sacketts Harbor, New York, whose 

 researches anticipated those of Soubeiran, Liebig, and Dumas by nearly a year. 



A committee of the Medico-chirurgical Society of Edinburgh gave him the 

 credit for having first published an account of the therapeutic effects of chloro- 

 form as a diffusive stimulant. Dr. Guthrie was likewise the inventor of a process 

 for the rapid conversion of potato starch into sugar. He also experimented with 

 considerable boldness in the domain of explosives, inventing various fulminating 

 compounds, which he developed commercially. 5 



Among early technical chemists Samuel Luther Dana 6 (1795-1868) stands 



1 See Memoir of Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, with Notices of his 

 Daughter, by George E. Ellis; also Complete Works of Count Rumford, 4 vols. 

 published by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (Boston, 1876). 



2 Cyclopaedia of American Biography, vol. v, p. 345, article Rumford, Benjamin 

 Thompson, Count. 



3 American Chemist, vol. v, 1874, p. 73. 



4 Smithsonian Miscellaneous Collections, vol. n, 1895. Also see the memoir of him 

 by the elder Silliman in the American Journal of Science (2), xxvi, 1858, p. 100. 



5 An account of his career has been published in pamphlet form by his de- 

 scendant, Ossian Guthrie. 



8 See sketch of Samuel Luther Dana in Pioneers of Science in America, (j 

 York, 1896), pp. 311-318. 



