Count Remford Essay, Research Paper

Count Rumford, for whom the Rumford fireplace is named, was born Benjamin Thompson in Woburn, Massachusetts in 1753 and, because he was a loyalist, he left (abruptly) with the British in 1776. He spent much of his life as an employee of the Bavarian government where he received his title, “Count of the Holy Roman Empire.” Rumford is known primarily for the work he did on the nature of heat.

Back in England, Rumford applied his knowledge of heat to the improvement of fireplaces. He made them smaller and shallower with widely angled covings so they would radiate better. And he streamlined the throat, or in his words “rounded off the breast” so as to “remove those local hindrances which forcibly prevent the smoke from following its natural tendency to go up the chimney…”

Rumford wrote two essays detailing his improvements on fireplaces in 1796 and in 1798. He was well known and widely read* in his lifetime, and almost immediately in the 1790s his “Rumford fireplace” became state of the art worldwide.

One of the most incredible men associated with science was Benjamin Thompson, later titled Count Rumford. Aside from making as many enemies as friends, this man amassed a large list of honorary titles and contributed significantly to scientific knowledge. He never let an opportunity for advancement escape him and many claimed he had no real love or regard for his fellow men. Nevertheless he was one of the first American scientists and his career was probably the strangest of all American success stories.

Thompson was born into a Massachusetts farming family in 1763. He was a strange boy who fancied he could build a perpetual motion machine and took great interest in eclipses. He became an itinerant teacher and was hired by a wealthy family in Rumford, Massachusetts. After endearing himself to nearly everyone, Benjamin married the daughter of the household and was accepted into high society. So favorably did he impress the local military officers that he was made a major at age 19. This undeserved honor made him quite unpopular with the local citizenry. In fact as the political climate ripened for revolution, Thompson was arrested upon suspicion of being inimical to the liberties of this country. Perhaps he was a spy, but most likely he was indifferent to the revolutionary cause. When released he left his wife and fled to England.

His charming manner and good looks won the friendship of the War Minister and soon he was elected to the Royal Society and named Under Secretary in the War Department. He returned to America to command the Queen’s Horse Dragoons against the colonists. During this time he strangely enough began systematic lunar observations and extensive experiments with gunpowder and shell velocity.

At age 30 he returned to England and traveled to Bavaria. He won the friendship of the Duke of Bavaria and in due time was made a Count of the Holy Roman Empire- Count Rumford. Thompson was bright enough and had enough power to apply his cherished ideas of enlightened despotism; he established a successful welfare system in Munich.

This was the time he made his greatest contribution to science. While watching a cannon being bored he noted the extreme amount of heat produced. After careful experiments he was able to deduce that heat was molecular motion, not a fluid. This was a breakthrough.

Count Rumford was a careful observer. He installed a glass door in his fireplace, watched the flame carefully, and soon designed better stoves and better chimneys. He built up quite a reputation as a nutritionist; he wrote several essays on the benefits of coffee over tea. Many credit him with inventing the folding bed and he made many improvements in the design of lamps. His main scientific accomplishment in later life was his large role in founding the Royal Institution in 1800. It was Count Rumford who hired Humphrey Davy as lecturer at the Institution and it was Count Rumford’s money that kept the Institution going in the beginning. Soon, however, the Institution became too theoretical for Thompson and he severed connection with it to move to France. He died in 1814 of a fever. He left his gold watch to Sir Humphrey Davy and much of his money to Harvard University.

Although much of what Benjamin Thompson did in his lifetime was simply not cricket, he was an enlightened philanthropist and did more for society and science than most men.

One of the most incredible men associated with science was Benjamin Thompson, later titled Count Rumford. Aside from making as many enemies as friends, this man amassed a large list of honorary titles and contributed significantly to scientific knowledge. He never let an opportunity for advancement escape him and many claimed he had no real love or regard for his fellow men. Nevertheless he was one of the first American scientists and his career was probably the strangest of all American success stories.

Thompson was born into a Massachusetts farming family in 1763. He was a strange boy who fancied he could build a perpetual motion machine and took great interest in eclipses. He became an itinerant teacher and was hired by a wealthy family in Rumford, Massachusetts. After endearing himself to nearly everyone, Benjamin married the daughter of the household and was accepted into high society. So favorably did he impress the local military officers that he was made a major at age 19. This undeserved honor made him quite unpopular with the local citizenry. In fact as the political climate ripened for revolution, Thompson was arrested upon suspicion of being inimical to the liberties of this country. Perhaps he was a spy, but most likely he was indifferent to the revolutionary cause. When released he left his wife and fled to England.

His charming manner and good looks won the friendship of the War Minister and soon he was elected to the Royal Society and named Under Secretary in the War Department. He returned to America to command the Queen’s Horse Dragoons against the colonists. During this time he strangely enough began systematic lunar observations and extensive experiments with gunpowder and shell velocity.

At age 30 he returned to England and traveled to Bavaria. He won the friendship of the Duke of Bavaria and in due time was made a Count of the Holy Roman Empire- Count Rumford. Thompson was bright enough and had enough power to apply his cherished ideas of enlightened despotism; he established a successful welfare system in Munich.

This was the time he made his greatest contribution to science. While watching a cannon being bored he noted the extreme amount of heat produced. After careful experiments he was able to deduce that heat was molecular motion, not a fluid. This was a breakthrough.

Count Rumford was a careful observer. He installed a glass door in his fireplace, watched the flame carefully, and soon designed better stoves and better chimneys. He built up quite a reputation as a nutritionist; he wrote several essays on the benefits of coffee over tea. Many credit him with inventing the folding bed and he made many improvements in the design of lamps. His main scientific accomplishment in later life was his large role in founding the Royal Institution in 1800. It was Count Rumford who hired Humphrey Davy as lecturer at the Institution and it was Count Rumford’s money that kept the Institution going in the beginning. Soon, however, the Institution became too theoretical for Thompson and he severed connection with it to move to France. He died in 1814 of a fever. He left his gold watch to Sir Humphrey Davy and much of his money to Harvard University.

Although much of what Benjamin Thompson did in his lifetime was simply not cricket, he was an enlightened philanthropist and did more for society and science than most men.

It frequently happens that in the ordinary affairs and occupations of life opportunities present themselves of contemplation some of the most curious operations of nature; and very interesting philosophical experiments might often be made, almost without trouble or expense, by means of machinery contrived for the mere mechanical purposes of the arts and manufactures.

I have frequently had occasion to make this observation, and am persuaded that a habit of keeping the eyes open to everything that is going on in the ordinary course of the business of life has oftener led, as it were by accident, or in the playful excursions of the imagination, put into action by contemplating the most common appearance, than all the more intense meditation of philosophers, in the hours expressly set apart for study.

It was by accident that I was led to make the experiments of which I am to give an account; and, though they are not perhaps of sufficient importance to merit so formal an introduction, I cannot help flattering myself that they will be thought curious in several respects, and worthy of the honor of being made known to the Royal Society.

Being engaged, lately, in superintending the boring of cannon, in the workshops of the military arsenal at Munich, I was struck with the very considerable degree of heat which a brass gun acquires, in a short time, in being bored; and with the still more intense heat ( much greater than that of boiling water, as I found by experiment) of the metallic chips separated from it by the borer.

The more I meditated on these phenomena the more they appeared to me to be curious and interesting. a thorough investigating of them seemed even to bid fair to give a farther insight into the hidden nature of heat; and to enable us to form some reasonable conjectures respecting the existence, or non- existence, of an igneous fluid: a subject on which the opinions of philosophers have, in all ages, been much divided.

In order that the society may have clear and distinct ideas of the speculations and also of the specific objects of philosophical investigation they suggested to me, I must beg leave to state them at some length and in such manner as I shall think best to answer this purpose.

From whence comes the heat actually produced in the mechanical operation above mentioned?

Is it furnished by the metallic chips which are separated by the borer from the solid mass of metal.