Life of Count Rumford. 501 



bituminous coal from Liverpool had come into general 

 use, the vapor and soot from which, as then burned, 

 were a great annoyance. The Professor adds : 



" It is due to the persons concerned in the introduction of the 

 use of this description of fuel into the United States, and of 

 Rumford's plans and principles for its cleanly and economic use, 

 that they should be commemorated while those who witnessed 

 their experiments and efforts still live to record them. To 

 fulfil this grateful task, we may therefore state that the first 

 range for cooking with coal was imported and set up by Wil- 

 liam Renwick, in 1796;- and that in 1798 it was lined with 

 fire-brick, in conformity with Rumford's principles, under the 

 direction of Professor John Kemp, of Columbia College ; that 

 a Rumford kitchen was put up by Isaac Gouverneur in 1798; 

 and that parlor grates were planned and the details of their 

 setting pointed out to the mechanics who executed them, by 

 David Gordon, afterwards, on his return to England in 1808, 

 distinguished as an engineer, and for his mode of rendering gas 

 portable for the purposes of illumination." 



In a very short Essay, numbered as the eleventh, the 

 Count offers " Observations concerning Open Chimney 

 Fireplaces." He found that his own reputation and 

 the improvements which he had proposed in these con- 

 structions as in the use of his roasters had suffered, 

 during his two years' absence in Germany, by the care- 

 lessness and other faults of the workmen who had been 

 employed in altering old fireplaces or fitting up new 

 ones. He designates the mistakes and the consequences 

 which have resulted from them, and he insists upon 

 the absolute necessity of strict adherence, without devia- 

 tion, to the directions, measurements, and proportions 

 which he had prescribed. 



More annoying still was another experience which 



* Sparks's Library of American Biography, Second Series, Vol. V. p. 134. 



