Life of Count Rumford. 243 



Premium by the President and Council of the Royal Society, no 

 new discovery or improvement should be made in any part of 

 Europe relative to either of the subjects in question (Heat or 

 Light) which in the opinion of the President and Council shall 

 be of sufficient importance to deserve this premium, in that case 

 it is my desire that the premium may not be given, but that the 

 value of it may be reserved, and, being laid out in the purchase 

 of additional stock in the English funds, may be employed to 

 augment the capital of this premium. And that the interest of 

 the same, by which the capital may from time to time be so 

 augmented, may regularly be given in money, with the two 

 medals, and as an addition to the original premium at each 

 such succeeding adjudication of it. And it is further my par- 

 ticular request, that those additions to the value of the premium 

 arising from its occasional non-adjudication may be suffered to 

 increase without limitation. 



" With the highest respect for the Royal Society, of London, 

 and the most earnest wishes for their success in their labours for 

 the good of mankind, 



"I am, &c., 



"RUMFORD." 



Undoubtedly the founder of this premium was in- 

 fluenced, at least in his selection of the method of it, by 

 the fact that the Royal Society already had in trust a 

 fund of one hundred pounds bequeathed by Sir Godfrey 

 Copley, in 1709, "to be laid out in experiments or 

 otherwise." The Society voted, in 1736, "To strike a 

 gold medal of the value of 5, to bear the arms of 

 the Society, as an honorary favor for the best experi- 

 ment produced within the year." 



The Copley medal had been awarded to Benjamin 

 Franklin in 1753, for "Curious Experiments and Ob- 

 servations on Electricity." Rumford himself received 

 the same medal in 1792, for " Various Papers on the 

 Properties and Communication of Heat." 



