Benjamin Thompson

Gracious Lord Count Rumford FRS
Born	Benjamin Thompson (1753-03-26)26 March 1753 Woburn, Massachusetts, British America
Died	21 August 1814(1814-08-21) (aged 61) Paris, Kingdom of France
Known for	Thermodynamics
Awards	Copley Medal (1792) Rumford Medal (1800)
Scientific career
Fields	Physics
Signature

Colonel Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, FRS (26 March 1753 – 21 August 1814), was an American-born British military officer, scientist, inventor and nobleman. Born in Woburn, Massachusetts, he supported the Loyalist cause during the American War of Independence, commanding the King's American Dragoons during the conflict. After the war ended in 1783, Thompson moved to London, where he was recognised for his administrative talents and received a knighthood from George III in 1784.

A prolific scientist and inventor, Thompson also created several new warship designs. He subsequently moved to the Electorate of Bavaria and entered into the employ of the Bavarian government, heavily reorganising the Bavarian Army. Thompson was rewarded for his efforts by being made an Imperial Count in 1792 before dying in Paris in 1814.^[1]

Thompson was born in rural

Thompson's prospects were dim in 1772 but in that year they changed abruptly. He met, charmed and married a rich and well-connected widow, an heiress named Sarah Rolfe (

When the American Revolutionary War began, Thompson, by now a wealthy and influential landowner, came out in opposition to the uprising. He soon used his connections in the state militia to recruit and arm loyalists seeking to aid British forces fighting the rebels. This earned him the enmity of New Hampshire's Patriot faction; he was stripped of his command and a mob attacked and burned Thompson's house. He fled to the British lines, abandoning his wife, as it turned out, permanently. Thompson became a political and military advisor to General Thomas Gage (to whom he was already passing information on the Americans), and later assisted Lord George Germain in the organization and provisioning of Loyalist units.

In 1781, Thompson financed his own military unit - The King's American Dragoons - which primarily served on Long Island in 1782 and early 1783, where they earned local notoriety for demolishing a church and burial ground in order to erect Fort Golgotha in Huntington.^[3]

While working with the British armies in America he conducted experiments to measure the force of

In 1785, he moved to

For his efforts, in 1791 Thompson was made an Imperial Count, becoming Reichsgraf von Rumford. He took the name "Rumford" after the town of Rumford, New Hampshire, which was an older name for Concord where he had been married.^[8]

Benjamin Thompson ... has many claims on the interest of the historian of science. ... He founded the Royal Institution ... His methods of conservation of heat and economy of fuel, his designs of stoves, fireplaces and cooking utensils were widely used during his lifetime. He was consulted on the laying out of kitchens in hospitals and institutions ... He taught his contemporaries to recognise the fire built on an open hearth, the only means of domestic heating and cooking with which they were acquainted, for the ineffective and wasteful contrivance it really was. He held the most enlightened views, ... far in advance of his time, on the waste of fuel and the evils of atmospheric pollution in cities. ... Rumford's constant preoccupation ... was the application of scientific principles to the improvement of the lot of the poor and the working classes, and it was in the subject of heat and its utilization that he found the greatest outlet for his endeavours.^[9]

— Thomas Martin, The Experimental Researches of Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford

His experiments on gunnery and explosives led to an interest in heat. He devised a method for measuring the

In 1797, he extended his claim about non-conductivity to liquids.[12] The idea raised considerable objections from the scientific establishment, John Dalton^[13] and John Leslie^[14] making particularly forthright attacks. Instrumentation far exceeding anything available in terms of accuracy and precision would have been needed to verify Thompson's claim. Again, he seems to have been influenced by his theological beliefs^[15] and it is likely that he wished to grant water a privileged and providential status in the regulation of human life.^[16]

He is considered the founder of the

Rumford's most important scientific work took place in Munich, and centred on the nature of heat, which he contended in "

Rumford made no attempt to further quantify the heat generated or to measure the mechanical equivalent of heat. Though this work met with a hostile reception, it was subsequently important in establishing the laws of conservation of energy later in the 19th century.

He explained Pictet's experiment, which demonstrates the reflection of cold, by supposing that all bodies emit invisible rays, undulations in the ethereal fluid.^[19] He did experiments to support his theories of calorific and frigorific radiation and said the communication of heat was the net effect of calorific (hot) rays and frigorific (cold) rays and the rays emitted by the object. When an object absorbs radiation from a warmer object (calorific rays) its temperature rises, and when it absorbs radiation from a colder object (frigorific rays) its temperature falls. See note 8, "An enquiry concerning the nature of heat and the mode of its communication" Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, starting at page 112.^{[full citation needed]}

Thompson was an active and prolific inventor, developing improvements for chimneys, fireplaces and industrial furnaces, as well as inventing the double boiler, a

The Rumford fireplace created a sensation in London when he introduced the idea of restricting the chimney opening to increase the updraught, which was a much more efficient way to heat a room than earlier fireplaces. He and his workers modified fireplaces by inserting bricks into the hearth to make the side walls angled, and added a choke to the chimney to increase the speed of air going up the flue. The effect was to produce a streamlined air flow, so all the smoke would go up into the chimney rather than lingering and entering the room. It also had the effect of increasing the efficiency of the fire, and gave extra control of the rate of combustion of the fuel, whether wood or coal. Many fashionable London houses were modified to his instructions, and became smoke-free.^[20]

Thompson became a celebrity when news of his success spread. His work was also very profitable, and much imitated when he published his analysis of the way chimneys worked. In many ways, he was similar to Benjamin Franklin, who also invented a new kind of heating stove.

The retention of heat was a recurring theme in his work, as he is also credited with the invention of

Thompson also significantly improved the design of kilns used to produce

After 1799, he divided his time between France and England. With Sir

Thompson endowed the

He was also known to have been a lover of George Germain, 1st Viscount Sackville.^[27][28][29]

• Colonel, King's American Dragoons.
• Knighted, 1784.
• Count of the Holy Roman Empire
  , 1791.
• The crater Rumford on the Moon is named after him.
• Rumford baking powder (patented 1859) is named after him, having been invented by a former Rumford professor at Harvard University, Eben Norton Horsford (1818–1893), cofounder of the Rumford Chemical Works of East Providence, RI.
• Rumford Kitchen at the World's Fair in Chicago, 1893.
• A street in the inner city of Munich is named after him.
• Rumford Street (and the nearby Rumford Place) in Liverpool, England, are so named due to a soup kitchen established to Count Rumford's plan which formerly stood on land adjacent to Rumford Street.^[30]
•  Poland–Lithuania: Order of the White Eagle (1789).

• An Essay on Chimney Fire-Places; With Proposals for Improving Them, to Save Fuel, to Render Dwelling-Houses More Comfortable and Salubrious, and Effectually to Prevent Chimnies from Smoking. Illustrated with Engravings, (1796).
• Collected Works of Count Rumford, Volume I, The Nature of Heat, (1968).
• Collected Works of Count Rumford, Volume II, Practical Applications of Heat, (1969).
• Collected Works of Count Rumford, Volume III, Devices and Techniques, (1969).
• Collected Works of Count Rumford, Volume IV, Light and Armament, (1970).
• Collected Works of Count Rumford, Volume V, Public Institutions, (1970).

• History of thermodynamics

References

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article "Rumford, Benjamin Thompson, Count".

• Cardwell, D.S.L. (1971). From Watt to Clausius: The Rise of Thermodynamics in the Early Industrial Age. London: Heinemann. pp. 95–107.
  ISBN 0-435-54150-1
  .
• Martin, T. (1951). "The Experimental Researches of Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford". Bulletin of the British Society for the History of Science. 1 (6): 144–158).
  JSTOR 4024834
  .

Further reading

Wikisource has the text of the 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica article "Rumford, Benjamin Thompson, Count".

• Bradley, D. (1967). Count Rumford. Van Nostrand.
  ASIN B0000CM48T
  .
• Brown, G.I. (2001). Count Rumford: The Extraordinary Life of a Scientific Genius – Scientist, Soldier, Statesman, Spy. Sutton Publishing.
  ISBN 0-262-02138-2
  .
• Brown, S.C. (1962). Count Rumford: Physicist Extraordinary. Doubleday & Co.
• Brown, S.C. (1981). Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford. Cambridge USA: MIT Press.
  ISBN 0-262-02138-2
  .
• Larsen, E. (1953). An American in Europe: The life of Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford. Rider.
  ASIN B0000CII01
  .
• Orton, V. (2000). The Forgotten Art of Building a Good Fireplace: The Story of Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, an American Genius & His Principles of Fireplace Design Which Have Remained Unchanged for 174 Years. Alan C. Hood and Company Inc.
  ISBN 0-911469-17-6
  .
• Sparrow, W.J. (1964). Knight of the White Eagle: A biography of Sir Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, 1753-1814. Hutchinson.
  ASIN B0000CM48T
  .

External links

Media related to Benjamin Thompson at Wikimedia Commons

• Eric Weisstein's World of Science. "Rumford, Benjamin Thompson". (1753–1814)
• Dr. Hugh C. Rowlinson "The Contribution of Count Rumford to Domestic Life in Jane Austen’s Time" An article not only detailing the Rumford fireplace, but also Rumford's life and other achievements.
• Works by Benjamin Thompson at Project Gutenberg
• Works by or about Benjamin Thompson at the Internet Archive
• A Biography of Benjamin Thompson, Jr. Written in 1868
• Escutcheons of Science
• Count Rumford's Birth Place and Museum
• Count Rumford Fireplaces website

Texts on Wikisource:

• • "
    Popular Science Monthly
    , Vol. 9, June 1876.
  • "Thompson, Benjamin (1754-1814)". Dictionary of National Biography. 1885–1900.
  • "
    New International Encyclopedia
    . 1905.
  • "Count Rumford". The New Student's Reference Work. 1914.

Political offices
Preceded by W. Knox T. De Grey	Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies with W. Knox 1780–1781	Succeeded by W. Knox J. Fisher