308 HISTORY OF SCIENCE. 



much of this may be saved. The result was the establishment of the 

 Royal Institution of Great Britain, which was formally opened on the 

 nth of March, 1800, Rumford being its superintendent. Three 

 months afterwards Dr. Thomas Young was engaged as Professor of 

 Natural Philosophy. The Institution has been fortunate in the se- 

 lection of its professors, for after Young there came Davy, and after 

 Davy came Faraday, names which have shed a lustre on the Institu- 

 tion that is worthily maintained by the present occupier of the chair 

 of Natural Philosophy Professor Tyndall. 



In 1805 Count Rumford married Madame Lavoisier, the widow of 

 the celebrated and unfortunate French chemist This union proved 

 an unhappy one, by reason of incompatibility of tastes and habits, 

 and four years afterwards the parties separated. Count Rumford died 

 in 1814 at Auteuil near Paris. 



When Rumford was engaged in superintending the boring of cannon 

 in the Government arsenal at Munich, his attention was arrested by 

 the great amount of heat acquired by brass guns during the operation 

 of boring. He was led to institute a number of experiments, the 

 details of which are described in his essay entitled, " An Inquiry Con- 

 cerning the Source of the Heat which is excited by Friction." The 

 substance of this essay was contained in a paper read before the Royal 

 Society in 1798. One case will suffice to acquaint the reader with the 

 general nature of the experiments. A brass cylinder was made to re- 

 volve against a steel borer, the cylinder being placed inside of a wooden 

 vessel, which also contained a determined quantity of water. The 

 quantity of water used in one experiment described by Rumford was 

 i8f Ibs., and the temperature of the water, which was 60 F. at the 

 beginning of the experiment, rose continually when the cylinder was 

 set in motion, until at the end of 2\ hours the water actually boiled. 



"It would be difficult," says Rumford, " to describe the surprise and 

 astonishment expressed in the countenances of the bystanders on seeing 

 so large a quantity of water heated, and actually made to boil, without 

 any fire." Yet, of the ways in which heat can be artificially produced, 

 that in which it is developed by friction is probably the most ancient. 

 For the mode in which some uncivilized races still obtain fire may be 

 taken as a true indication of the usages of prehistoric man in this re- 

 spect. This method is by friction between two pieces of wood. The 

 modus operand^ however, is not simply the rubbing together of two 

 sticks held in the hand, but that shown in our illustration, and used, 

 with slight differences, in very different parts of the world for ex- 

 ample, in Northern Asia, North America, Brazil, Australia, and Poly- 

 nesia. This plan consists essentially in causing the end of a wooden 

 rod to revolve very rapidly in a small cavity made in a piece of dry 

 timber. The differences observed consist only in the ways in which 

 the rapid rotatory motion is impressed upon the rod, which is, in all 

 cases, pressed strongly against the piece of timber. The simplest 



