350 NINETEENTH CENTURY. PT. in. 



Still most scientific men looked upon heat as a fluid, 

 which they called caloric, until, in the year 1798, Count 

 Rumford first showed by experiment that it is probably a 

 kind of motion. In following strict chronological order, this 

 discovery ought to have been mentioned at the end of the 

 eighteenth century, but it belongs so intimately to the 

 modern theory that it comes more naturally in this place. 



Count Rumford shows that Heat can be produced 

 by Friction, 1798. Benjamin Thompson, afterwards Count 

 Rumford, was born in America in 1753. He spent his 

 early life fighting in the English army against the Americans, 

 in the War of Independence, and afterwards settled at 

 Munich, and became aide-de-camp to the Elector of Bavaria. 

 In 1798 he came over to England, where he was one of the 

 founders of our Royal Institution, and finally he died in 

 Paris in 1844. 



Rumford's inquiries into the nature of heat began in 

 rather a curious way. He was very anxious to make the 

 poorer people in Bavaria happier and more prosperous, and 

 to accomplish this he persuaded the Elector of Bavaria in 

 i 790, to forbid any one to beg in the streets. Those who 

 could not find work for themselves were taken up and kept 

 in a kind of workhouse, where they were given good food 

 and clothing, but were forced to work to pay for their own 

 support When this law was first passed, there were no 

 less than- 2 5 oo beggars to be provided for, and Rumford was 

 obliged to calculate very closely how he could find food and 

 clothing, heat and light, for the least money. Accordingly 

 he studied how fireplaces could best be built to prevent 

 coal being wasted, and invented a lamp which gave a 

 brilliant light, without burning so much oil as other lamps 

 did. He even went so far as to make a complete set of 

 experiments on different clothing materials, in order to see 



