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241 [359] APPERT
RUMFORD [360] a way of calculating orbits, something that Gauss [415] was soon to perfect. The upheaval of the French Revolu tion cost him his financial independence, but by that time he was sufficiently well known to be able to support himself by teaching and by accepting government positions. He never did as well as he deserved, apparently because of the en mity of Laplace [347], a small-minded man.
[359] APPERT, Nicolas (François) (a-pairi) French inventor
ber 23, 1752 Died: Massy, near Paris, June 3, 1841
Appert, the son of an innkeeper, was a cook and confectioner, working in his fa ther’s establishment at first and then for several noblemen in the days before the French Revolution. Self-educated, he was interested in de vices for preserving food, for profes sional purposes. So was Napoleon, for economic and military purposes. Napo leon offered a prize in 1795 for practical preservation methods, and Appert spent fourteen years working out a system in which by first heating the food and then sealing it from air, putrefaction was pre vented. He opened a factory to produce such sealed products in 1804. (This was an application, whether Appert knew it or not, of Spallanzani’s [302] experiment and depended for its efficacy on the fact that spontaneous generation of microor ganisms did not take place. It foreshad owed pasteurization a half century later, as Pasteur [642] himself freely ad mitted.)
Napoleon gave him 12,000 francs in 1809 and Appert then published his dis covery—which served as the foundation of the vast canning industry of today and, with Borden’s [524] work a half century later, altered the food habits of man. Appert, who also developed the bouil lon cube, did well for a while but was financially ruined after Napoleon’s fall 2 4 2 and died poor. The commercial cannery he founded—the first in the world— remained in business, however, and did not close its doors till 1933. [360] RUMFORD, Benjamin Thompson, Count American-British physicist Bom: Woburn, Massachusetts, March 26, 1753 Died: Auteuil (near Paris), France, August 21, 1814 Benjamin Thompson (better known as Count Rumford) was born the son of a farmer, only two miles from the birth place, a half century before, of that other Benjamin, Benjamin Franklin [272], He began life quietly as an apprentice to a storekeeper in Salem, but in 1766 he was nearly killed in the explosion of some fireworks he was making to help celebrate the repeal of the Stamp Act. After recovery, he returned to Boston to become an assistant in another store. At nineteen he married a rich widow con siderably older than himself and lived with her in Rumford (now Concord), New Hampshire. All would have gone well were it not that the Revolutionary War broke out and young Thompson’s sympathies were with the king. Indeed, he served the British troops by spying on his countrymen. When the British troops left Boston, Thompson went with them (leaving wife and child behind) and spent the war in minor government offices in England, ending with a short stay in the still em battled colonies as a lieutenant colonel in the king’s forces. When the Revolu tionary War was over and the colonials had won their independence, Thompson knew himself to be in permanent exile. Thompson’s character did not improve in England. He took bribes and was sus pected of selling war secrets to the French. In 1783, with the permission of George III, he found it safer to go to the Continent in search of adventure. There he fell in with Elector Karl Theodor of Bavaria, for whom he worked as an intelligent and capable ad ministrator. He established workhouses
[360] RUMFORD
RUMFORD [360] for Munich beggars, for instance, and had them turn out army uniforms with an efficiency that helped both the beg gars and the army. He also introduced Watt’s [316] steam engine and the potato to the Continent. The elector expressed his gratitude in 1790 by making Thompson a count, and Thompson chose Rumford as his name, for that was the town in which his wife was bom and near which he had had an estate. In the Bavarian service he grew interested in the problem of heat and that was the occasion for his most im portant contribution to science. In the eighteenth century, heat was looked upon as an imponderable fluid, like phlogiston. Lavoisier [334], who demolished phlogiston, continued to think of heat as a fluid that could be poured from one substance to another and called it caloric. Rumford, however, while boring can non in Munich in 1798 noticed that the blocks of metal grew hot as blazes as the boring tool gouged them out, so that they had to be cooled constantly with water. The orthodox explanation was that caloric was being loosened from the metal as the metal was broken down into shavings by the boring. Rumford noticed that the heating continued as long as the boring did, with no letup, and that enough caloric was removed from the brass to have melted the metal if it were poured back in. In other words, more caloric was being removed from the brass than could have been contained in it. In fact, if the boring instruments were dull so that no metal was ground to shavings, the caloric did not stop pouring out of the metal. On the contrary, the metal heated up more than ever. Rumford’s conclusion was that the me chanical motion of the borer was being converted to heat and that heat was therefore a form of motion, a view that had been groped toward for a century and more by such men as Francis Bacon [163], Boyle [212], and Hooke [223], And in this, they and Rumford are now considered to have been right. Rumford even tried to calculate how much heat was produced by a given quantity of mechanical energy. He was thus the first to set a figure for what we now call the mechanical equivalent of heat. His figure was far too high, how ever, and a half century passed before Joule [613] reported the correct value. Rumford, through his arrogance and the general unpleasantness of his charac ter, finally outwore his welcome in Ba varia too, particularly after the death of the elector. That, and the pressure of Napoleon’s victories, made it advisable for Rumford to return to England in 1799, and there his achievements were recognized and he was admitted into the Royal Society. In that year he weighed a quantity of water both as water and as ice and could detect no change in weight with the most delicate balance. Since water lost heat when it froze and gained it when it melted, as had been demon strated by Black [298], it followed that caloric, if it existed, must be weightless. The fate of phlogiston made weightless fluids suspect and this experiment weak ened the caloric theory, too. Rumford, with the encouragement of that scientific Maecenas, Sir Joseph Banks [331], founded the Royal Institu tion in 1799 and obtained young men such as Young [402] and Davy [421] as lecturers. Rumford was a little dubious about the latter until he heard him give a lecture. That resolved all doubts, and in deed Davy was to grow famous through his lectures. In addition, Davy had just conducted some experiments that led him to the same conclusions as Rum ford. Davy had arranged for ice to be rubbed mechanically, the entire system being kept one degree below the freezing point. There was insufficient caloric in the whole system, according to the or thodox view, to melt the ice, and yet it melted. Davy decided that the mechani cal motion was converted to heat. Cer tainly this experiment didn’t hurt Davy in Rumford’s regard. (Historians of sci ence doubt that the experiment could have worked as described by Davy, but Davy believed it worked and described the results in his first publication.) In any case, neither Rumford’s nor Davy’s experiment was convincing to physicists. The caloric theory, which seemed to be substantiated by the work
[361] NICHOLSON BLANCHARD
of Prévost [356], and was strongly backed by such men as Berthollet [346], lived on for another half century until Maxwell [692] killed it once and for all. In 1804 Rumford went to Paris, though Great Britain and France were at war and France was threatening an inva sion. (Political passions were milder then, it would seem.) While he was in Paris, his path crossed that of the dead Lavoisier a second time. Having pro duced evidence against Lavoisier’s theory of heat, he (having outlived his first wife) proceeded to marry Lavoisier’s widow (who was rich and who kept the famous name of her martyred first hus band). It was a late marriage—he being slightly over fifty, she slightly under— and an unhappy one, their first quarrel coming the day after their marriage. After four years they separated and Rumford was so ungallant as to hint that she was so hard to get along with that Lavoisier was lucky to have been guillo tined. However, it is quite obvious that Rumford was no daisy himself. In 1811 his American daughter by his first wife joined him and cared for him in his last years. Incidentally, despite all the unpleasant messes of Rumford’s character, there was a strong streak of idealism in him. He believed it better to make people happy first as a way of making them vir tuous later (rather than the reverse, which has been the seemingly hopeless tactic of religions for so long). Then, too, like Franklin he refused to patent his inventions, which included a double boiler, a drip coffeepot, and a kitchen range. He even attempted a recon ciliation with the United States in the end, and though he died, as he had lived, in exile, he left most of his estate to the United States and endowed a profes sorship in applied science at Harvard. [361] NICHOLSON, William English chemist
Nicholson, the son of an attorney, left school at sixteen and became a midship man in the service of the East India Company. He made two or three voy ages to the East Indies while so em ployed. Then he worked in a lawyer’s office and finally as a waterworks engi neer. He never married. He became a science writer, turning out a successful Introduction to Natural
though, it was in connection with water (a natural subject of interest for an ex midshipman) that he had his opportunity of doing as well as writing. In 1790 he invented a hydrometer for measuring the density of water, but his most significant work was in 1800. On March 20 of that year Volta [337] wrote to Banks [331], president of the Royal Society, informing him of his con struction of an electric battery. Nichol son heard of this and with the aid of a friend built his own Voltaic pile by May 2, making no attempt, apparently, to point out that Volta had priority. It was the first in England. Nicholson’s great contribution was to place wires attached to the two ends of the pile in water. He found that with the current flowing, bub bles of gas (hydrogen and oxygen) were given off. He had “electrolyzed” water, breaking up the molecules into the indi vidual elements. He thus reversed the demonstration of Cavendish [307], that hydrogen and oxygen could unite to form water. This was the first demon stration that an electric current could bring about a chemical reaction—the re verse of Volta’s demonstration that a chemical reaction could bring about an electric current. Nicholson edited a chemical journal, which he founded in 1797 and in which he reported his own work with the Vol taic pile even before Volta himself got a chance to publish. It was the first inde pendent scientific journal. In 1808 he compiled a Dictionary of Practical and
[362] BLANCHARD, Jean Pierre Fran çois (blan-shahri) French aeronaut Born: Les Andelys, Eure, July 4, 1753
Died: Paris, March 7, 1809 244 [363] MURDOCK
PROUST [364] Blanchard, born of poor parents, had a natural mechanical ability. When he was sixteen, he constructed a kind of bi cycle. Then, in the 1770s, he tried to construct a flying machine, but once he heard of the Montgolfier [325] balloons, equipped with hydrogen, that was enough for him. He began to make daring flights in both England and France in 1784 and on March 2, 1784, he and an American physician, John Jeffries, were the first to float across the English Channel, carry ing the first airmail in history. They landed near Calais. He went to the United States in 1793 and made balloon ascensions there, with President George Washington among the spectators on one occasion. He suffered a heart attack in the course of his sixtieth balloon ascension (this one in the Neth erlands), fell from it, was badly hurt, and died not long after. His great contribution was the inven tion of the parachute. In 1785 in Lon don he became the first man in history to make use of a parachute, dropping a dog (or cat) in a basket attached to one. But despite all the feats of daring of men such as Blanchard the balloon remained a dead end for aeronautics, even after it was powered by Zeppelin [737] a cen tury later. The true road was to be found by the Wright brothers [961, 995]. [363] MURDOCK, William Scottish inventor
gust 21, 1754 Died: Birmingham, Warwickshire, England, November 15, 1839 Murdock, largely uneducated, cut his eyeteeth in 1777 in James Watt’s [316] firm near Birmingham when Watt was beginning to sell his steam engines. Mur dock went down to Cornwall to super vise the installation of engines in the mines there and by 1800 had risen to be a partner in the concern. He joined the Lunar Society, a group of Birmingham scientists that included Watt, Priestley [312], and Erasmus Dar win [308], among others. This society was politically liberal and was brought to an end in the disorders in 1791 that burned down Priestley’s house. Murdock invented various devices in connection with the steam engine, but his great feat was in another direction. He was the first to see in coal something more than a simple solid fuel. In 1792 he began to heat coal (also peat and wood) in the absence of air, and to store the gases that were driven off. These gases were, like the materials from which they came, inflammable, but being gases they possessed certain conveniences. They could be piped from place to place and required no strenuous transport. They could easily be set alight and the flame could easily be controlled by adjusting the rate of gas flow. Although the idea was ridiculed by many (includ ing the poet and novelist Walter Scott), Murdock persisted. By 1800 Murdock had set up an ex perimental gas light, using coal gas. In 1802 he celebrated the temporary Peace of Amiens with Napoleon by setting up a spectacular display of gas lights, and by 1803 he was routinely lighting his main factory with them. In 1807 some Lon don streets began to use gas lighting. It was the first new form of lighting of the industrial age, and gas lighting was to expand in importance for nearly a cen tury, until superseded by Edison’s [788] electric light. Gas flames are of course still used in heating and cooking. As in the case of Whitney’s [386] cot ton gin, gas lighting proved too simple an invention for the inventor’s peace of mind. Others exploited it and Murdock had to expend considerable effort to maintain his own claims for priority. [364] PROUST, Joseph Louis (proost) French chemist Born: Angers, Maine-et-Loire, September 26, 1754 Died: Angers, July 5, 1826 The son of an apothecary, Proust had the opportunity of passing his youth in an atmosphere saturated with chemistry. He went to Paris while still a young man and established himself there as an 2 4 5
[364] PROUST
FOURCROY [366] apothecary-chemist. He was one of the first to take part in the balloon rage of the 1780s, making an ascension in 1784. He avoided the upheaval of the French Revolution since he traveled to Spain shortly before it began. There he spent two decades in fruitful labor in Madrid under the patronage of the Spanish king, Charles IV, who supplied him lavishly, for instance, with platinum vessels. In 1808 Charles IV was ousted from his throne by Napoleon, and Proust, his laboratory looted by the French soldiers, lost his position. He re turned to France and lived out his life in retirement. Napoleon offered him a grant to enable him to continue his research, but he was in poor health and turned it down. After Napoleon’s fall, Proust was made a member of the French Academy and was given a pension by Louis XVIII. Proust investigated different sugars and distinguished between different varieties. He was the first to study the sugar in grapes, which we now call glu cose. However, the great event of his life was an eight-year running controversy of epic proportions with his contemporary Berthollet [346], (This did not prevent Berthollet from greeting Proust cordially on the latter’s return to France.) Berthollet believed that the course of reactions depended on the mass of the reacting materials present and that this dictated both the rate of action and the nature of the composition of the final products. He was right in the first con clusion but, as Proust showed, wrong in his second. Using painstakingly careful analysis Proust showed in 1799 that copper car bonate contained definite proportions by weight of copper, carbon, and oxygen no matter how it was prepared in the lab oratory or how it was isolated from na ture. The preparation was always 5 of copper to 4 of oxygen to 1 of carbon. He went on to show a similar situation for a number of other compounds and formulated the generalization that all compounds contained elements in cer tain definite proportions and no others, regardless of conditions of production. This is called the law of definite propor tions, and sometimes Proust’s law. Proust also showed that Berthollet, in presenting evidence that certain com pounds varied in composition according to the method of preparation, was misled through inaccurate analyses and through the use of products he had insufficiently purified. Proust’s victory in this battle was quite clear and was to be made con clusive a generation later by Berzelius [425], Proust’s law went a long way toward persuading Dalton [389] that elements must occur in the form of atoms and thus paved the way for the final and long-delayed victory of atomism. [365] PARKINSON, James English physician Born: Hoxton Square, London, April 11, 1755 Died: London, December 21, 1824 Parkinson, the son of a surgeon, was a practicing surgeon himself by 1784. He was a political and social liberal who wrote pamphlets in favor of parlia mentary reform and for better treatment of mental patients. He was the first to write a medical re port on a perforated appendix (in 1812) and to recognize it as a cause of death. In 1817 he wrote a medical description of a condition he called “the shaking palsy,” but which others have called Par kinson’s disease ever since. Geology and the study of fossils was an avocation of his. He was correct in thinking that coal was of plant origin, but he favored Werner [355] over Hut ton [297] and accepted Cuvier’s [396] catastrophism. [366] FOURCROY, Antoine François, comte de (foor-krwah') French chemist
Fourcroy, the son of an apothecary, worked as a clerk early in his life. He 2 4 6
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