Sir Benjamin Thompson Rumford, (1753-1814). American – British physicist, supervising the boring of a canon barrel to demonstrate the generation of the immense amount of heat in the process. As an experimental scientist he was the first to regard heat as a form of energy, suggesting that as the drill bit into the metal, the mechanical energy was converted into heat that was too great to be explained by the caloric theory of the French chemist, Antoine Lavoisier (1743-1794). Rumford had experimentally deduced the relationship between the work done and the heat generated.


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Keywords: antoine, benjamin, boring, caloric, cannon, chemist, energy, experiment, experimental, form, friction, heat, lavoisier, rumford, scientist, sir, theory, thermodynamics, thompson, vibratory