“Did you hear the one about the woman who threw her toaster away because it kept burning the bread? She was black toast intolerant.”
Count Benjamin Thompson RumfordBorn 26 Mar 1753; died 21 Aug 1814 at age 61.American-British physicist, government administrator, and a founder of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, London. Because he was a Redcoat officer and an English spy during the American revolution, he moved into exile in England. Through his investigations of heat he became one of the first scientists to declare that heat is a form of motion rather than a material substance, as was popularly believed until the mid-19th century. Among his numerous scientific contributions are the development of a calorimeter and a photometer. He invented a double boiler, a kitchen stove and a drip coffee pot. |
