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Re: On Heat.



being a socialist, I am also aware of Thompson's (formerly of Woburn Ma)
contribution to social progress, viz. founding of schools for the poor, a
Vet. school, creating work for the unemployed, etc. I was introduced to this
aspect of his life by my Latin teacher ca. 1953. His career reminds me of
Franklin's (married $$$, turned to science, etc.), but he became a loyalist,
and the crown rewarded him with a 50% life pension.

Tidbits: co-founder of the Royal Institution (he had first tried to buy the
position of superintendent of West Point! The RI got the $$ instead), married
Mme. Lavoisier, elector of Bavaria, inventor of the dripolater coffee maker,
etc.

bc

P.s. His title is not Brit., but from the Holy Roman Empire! Rumford is the
original name for Concord when in Mass.

Brian Whatcott wrote:

I came across this excerpt today, which you may enjoy:

"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 upon these phenomena, the more they appeared to me 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 existance, or
non-existance, of an igneous fluid; a subject on which the opinions of
philosophers have, in all ages, been much divided."

Benjamin Thompson, Lord Rumford.
Minister of War, Bavaria.
[from Heat Engines. J.F. Sandfort. Heinemann.]

Brian Whatcott
Altus OK Eureka!