COUNT RUMFORD IDENTIFIES HEAT 

 WITH MOTION. 



[Benjamin Thompson, who received the title of Count 

 Rumford from the Elector of Bavaria, was born in Woburn, 

 Massachusetts, in 1753. When thirty-one years of age 

 he settled in Munich, where he devoted his remarkable 

 abilities to the public service Twelve years afterward 

 he removed to England* in 1800 he founded the Royal 

 Institution of London, since famous as the theatre of the 

 labours of Davy, Faraday, Tyndall, and Dewar. He be- 

 queathed to Harvard University a fund to endow a pro- 

 fessorship of the application of science to the art of living: 

 he instituted a prize to be awarded by the American Aca- 

 demy of Sciences for the most important discoveries and 

 improvements relating to heat and light . In 1 804 he married 

 the widow of the illustrious chemist Lavoisier: he died in 

 1814. Count Rumford on January 25, 1798, read a paper 

 before the Royal Society entitled "An Enquiry Concerning 

 the Source of Heat Which Is Excited by Friction." The 

 experiments therein detailed proved that heat is identical 

 with motion, as against the notion that heat is matter. HD 

 thus laid the corner-stone of the modern theory that heat 

 light, electricity, magnetism, chemical action, and all other 

 forms of energy are in essence motion, are convertible into 

 one another, and as motion are indestructible. The follow- 

 ing abstract of Count Rumford's paper is taken from "Heat 

 as a Mode of Motion," by Professor John Tyndall, published 

 by D. Appleton & Co., New York. This work and "The 

 Correlation and Conservation of Forces," edited by Dr. 

 E. L. Youmans, published by the same house, will serve as 

 a capital introduction to the modern theory that energy 

 is motion which, however varied in its forms, is changeless 

 in its quantity [j 



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