466 RUMELIA RUMFORD tends to cause perspiration. Rum is greatly improved by age, and when very old is often highly prized. At a sale in Carlisle, England, in 1865, ruin known to be 140 years old sold for three guineas a bottle. KMIKM . See ROUMELIA. RUMFORD, Benjamin Thompson, count, an Ame- rican natural philosopher, born in Woburn, Mass., March 26, 1753, died at Auteuil, near Paris, Aug. 21, 1814. He was educated at the common school in his native place, afterward at Medford, and at the age of 13 entered the counting house of a Salem merchant. In 1770 he taught an academy in Rumford (now Con- cord), N. U., and in,.1772 married Mrs. Rolfe of tli at place, a wealthy widow considerably his senior, and was made major in the militia of Xew llampshire by the royal governor. This excited the jealousy of older officers, and he was charged with disaffection to the cause of the colonies, driven from his home, and finally took refuge in Boston, where he be- came an associate of Gen. Gage and the other British officers. He was subsequently tried at Woburn, and, though not condemned, was re- fused a full acquittal, and afterward made an unsuccessful effort to obtain a commission in the continental army. When Boston fell into the hands of the patriots he carried to England the despatches announcing that event. There lie was employed by Lord George Germain, secretary of state for the department of the colonies, and in 1780 became under secretary of state. After the retirement of Lord Ger- main in 1781 Mr. Thompson returned to Amer- ica, and there formed a regiment of dragoons, of which ho received the command with the rank of lieutenant colonel. Returning to Eng- land at the close of hostilities, he obtained leave of absence to visit the continent of Eu- rope, and by permission of the English gov- ernment entered the service of the elector of Bavaria, who knighted him. Toward the end of 1784 ho settled in Munich with the appoint- ment of aide-de-camp and chamberlain to the elector. Here he reorganized the entire mili- tary establishment of Bavaria. In the begin- ning of 1790 he undertook to suppress beg- gary in Bavaria, which had become a profes- sion, and inculcated habits of industry and order in the people of the lower class. In this he was successful, and was also wholly or partially so in the establishment of a mil- itary school, the improvement of the breed of horses and of horned cattle, and the conver- sion of an old hunting ground near Munich into a park, where after his departure the inhabitants erected a monument in his honor. He had been successively raised to the rank of a major general in the army, member of the council of state, lieutenant general, com- mander-in-chief of the general staff, minis- ter of war, and count of the holy Roman empire, on which occasion ho chose as a title the name of the place in America in which he had resided. His health failing under his ar- duous labors, he made a tour in Italy ; but not finding himself recovered, he visited Eng- land, reaching that country in September, 171)5, and on his arrival in London was robbed of a trunk containing all his private papers and original notes and observations on philosophi- cal subjects. Returning to Bavaria when that country was threatened by the war in 1796 between France and Germany, he was ap- pointed head of the council of regency du- ring the absence of the elector, and main- tained the neutrality of Munich ; for this ser- vice many honors were conferred upon him, one of which was an appointment to the su- perintendency of the general police of the elec- torate. As the climate did not agree with him, after spending two years in public duties and private studies, he determined to fix his resi- dence in England, and was named minister to the court of St. James; but the English govern- ment, acting on the rule of inalienable allegi- ance, refused to recognize him in this capacity. While in England ho was largely concerned in the affairs of the royal institution, of which he was the real founder. After the death of Charles Theodore, elector of Bavaria (1799), Rumford gave up his citizenship in the electo- rate, and finally settled at Paris. He married in 1804 for his second wife the widow of La- voisier, and with her retired to the villa of Auteuil, the residence of her former husband, where he spent the remainder of his life. He contributed a largo number of papers to various scientific journals. The subject to which he devoted his philosophical investi- gations more than any other was that of heat, and what has been done to demonstrate ex- perimentally the doctrine of " correlation of forces " was begun by him in a series of ex- periments suggested by the heat evolved in boring cannon at the arsenal in Munich. (See CORBELATIOX OF FORCES.) For Count Rum- ford's claim to having very nearly established the " mechanical equivalent of heat," see a paper by Prof. Robert II. Thurston in the " Transactions of the American Society of Civ- il Engineers," vol. ii., p. 289; also Tyndall's " Heat as a Mode of Motion." Rumford also devoted a good deal of attention to the con- struction of chimneys, with principal reference to remedies for their smoking, and wrote popu- lar essays on the subject. His investigations into the strength of materials and the force of gunpowder resulted in great improvements in artillery; and on the subjects of light and illu- mination he also made many experiments and discoveries. Some years before his death he instituted prizes for discoveries in light and heat, to be awarded by the royal society of London and the American academy of sciences, of which he himself received the first on the former subject from the royal society ; and he bequeathed to Harvard university the funds by which was founded the Rumford professor- ship of the physical and mathematical sci- ences as applied to the useful arts, which was
