Elector Palatine

Benjamin Thompson (North Woburn, Massachusetts, 26 March 1753-Auteuil, nr. Paris, 21 August 1814), a Royalist American, contemporary of Benjamin Franklin, was for a time in the service of the Elector Palatine of Bavaria, who in 1792 created him Count Rumford of the Holy Roman Empire. He is known for important researches on the nature of heat and as the founder of the Royal Institution in London. Rumford was especially interested in the economic production of heat, and invented several ingenious fire-places and stoves." He expressed doubts on the caloric theory in 1797. In Munich he noticed the large amount of heat evolved in the boring of cannon, and from experiments with a blunt borer in a cylinder of metal turned by horses he concluded that it is extremely difficult, if not quite impossible, to form any distinct idea of anything capable of being excited and communicated in the manner the heat was excited and communicated in these experiments except it be motion . Rumford published other important researches. ... 

Matthias to the Diet of Worms, where he made a 6ne speech and courageously denounced the Spanish tyranny [(D)], He was one of the plenipotentiaries whom the Estates sent to France in 1580 to make representations to the Due d Alen9on [(E)], He was Consul at Antwerp in 1584 when the town was besieged by the Duke of Parma. In the year 1593, he escorted to the Palatinate Princess Louise Julienne who had been betrothed to the Elector Frederick IV. ... 

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