Rumford

Count, an American inventor. His original name was Benjamin Thompson. He was born in Woburn, Massachusetts, 1753, and died in Paris in 1814. When a boy he clerked in a store in Salem. In this way, and by teaching school, he maintained himself while studying medicine and physics. In 1770 he taught in an academy at the town of Rumford, now Concord, the capital of New Hampshire. Two years later he married a rich widow of that place.

At the outbreak of the Revolutionary War Thompson's sympathies were with the British. Though offered a command in the colonial army he preferred to join the army of Lord Howe in Boston. When Washington forced the British to leave that city, Thompson was sent to England with dispatches. He there obtained an appointment in the foreign office and was the confidential adviser of the British officials in matters pertaining to colonial affairs. In 1781 he returned to New York and raised a regiment of loyalist troops, known as the King's Army Dragoons, in which he held a command as lieutenant-colonel. He returned to England, however, before the treaty of peace was signed. In 1784 he entered the service of the Duke of Bavaria and became in fact the administrative officer of that kingdom. He reorganized the Bavarian army, suppressed beggary, advocated advanced methods of agriculture, and introduced improved breeds of cattle and horses. He also laid out a city park for Munich. As might be expected, he rose rapidly in the confidence of the Bavarian monarch, who created him Count Rumford, the name being chosen by Thompson himself out of regard for the New Hampshire town in which he formerly lived.

In 1795 Rumford revisited London and was received with much attention by the various learned societies. He was a man of no little scientific attainment. He is credited with having been the first to announce that heat is simply a form of molecular motion. Count Rumford also investigated the problem of draught in fireplaces and chimneys. He was the first to demonstrate that an ascending current of hot air is due to atmospheric pressure. In 1802 he settled at Paris, and two years later married a second wife, the widow of a noted French chemist, Lavoisier. He presented $5,000 to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a similar amount to establish prizes for discovery in heat and light. He also left Harvard a bequest with which the Rumford professorship of physical and mathematical sciences was established.