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An inquiry concerning the source of the heat which is excited by friction by Benjamin Thompson 2026-11-05
By Benjamin Thompson, credited as Benjamin Count of Rumford. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London 88, 80–102. DOI: doi.org/10.1098/rstl.1798.0006. Original paper scan hosted by the University of Notre Dame; read 25 January 1798. Inspected Experiment No. 3 and the metal-chip/strip calorimetry control near the beginning. OCR is imperfect; the experiment number is the primary locator.
Benjamin Thompson Created 2026-10-24 Updated 2026-11-05
Benjamin Thompson, also known as Count Rumford, investigated the sustained production of heat by friction during cannon boring. In the water-enclosed experiment, continued mechanical motion heated the surrounding water to boiling. He also compared the thermal behavior of material removed from the bore with that of the original metal, testing whether the heating could be explained by releasing a special store from the chips. The observations helped challenge a finite-reservoir account of caloric and connected mechanical work with the production of heat.[ref]
An inquiry concerning the source of the heat which is excited by friction by Benjamin Thompson. 1798 paper, metal-chip/strip comparison and Experiment No. 3
Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford; early nineteenth-century copy after a 1792 portrait by Moritz Kellerhoven; National Portrait Gallery, London; public-domain image via Wikimedia Commons
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