2 56 Count Rumford’s Experiments to determine 
the strength of various bodies which I began many years ago, 
and an account of which I intend at some future period to 
lay before the Royal Society,* I found, by taking the mean of 
the results of several experiments, that a cylinder of good 
tough hammered iron, the area of whose transverse section 
was only of an inch, was able to sustain a weight of 1 19 lbs. 
avoirdupois, without breaking. This gives 63,466 lbs. for the 
weight which a cylinder of the same iron whose transverse 
section is one inch, would be able to sustain without being 
broken. The area of the fracture of the barrel before men- 
tioned was measured with the greatest care, and was found 
to measure very exactly 6± superficial inches. If now we sup- 
pose the iron of which this barrel was formed, to be as strong 
as that whose strength I determined (and I have no reason to 
suspect it to be of an inferior quality), in that case, the force 
actually employed in bursting the barrel must have been equal 
to the pressure of a weight of 41 2529 lbs. For the resistance or 
cohesion of one inch, is to 63466 lbs. as that of inches to 
412529 lbs. ; and this force, so astonishingly great, was exerted 
by a body which weighed less than 26 grains Troy, and which 
acted in a space that hardly amounted to t 'q of a cubic inch. 
To compare this force exerted by the elastic vapour gene- 
* Since writing the above, I have met with a misfortune which has put it out of my 
power to fulfil my promise to the Royal Society. On my return to England from Ger- 
many in October, 1795, after an absence of eleven years, I was stopped in my post- 
chaise in St. Paul’s churchyard, in London, at six o’clock in the evening, and robbed 
of a trunk which was behind my carriage, containing all my private papers and my 
original notes and observations on philosophical subjects. By this cruel accident I 
have been deprived of the fruits of the labours of my whole life ; and have lost all that 
I held most valuable. This most severe blow has left an impression on my mind, 
which I feel that nothing will ever be able entirely to remove. 
