Count rumford biography of albert
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COUNT RUMFORD
SIR BENJAMIN THOMPSON
1753 -1814
World-renowned Soldier, Statesman, Inventor & Scientist
National Historic Landmark
THE LIFE AND LEGEND OF COUNT RUMFORD
Born Woburn, Massachusetts
Controversy was as much a part of Rumford’s life as was brilliance and achievement, so it’s not easy to picture this flamboyant figure in the simple setting of the farmhouse on Elm Street that was his birthplace. But that is where life began for Sir Benjamin Thompson at the home of his grandfather on March 26, 1753.
Perhaps it was John Fowle, the Harvard educated village teacher who first noticed signs of talent in young Thompson - his skill with mechanical devices, his almost faultless command of language and grammar before his thirteenth year. These skills later won him the right, along with friend and neighbor Loammi Baldwin (regarded by many as America’s first engineer), to attend Professor John Winthrop’s lectures on science at Harvard.
Early Career
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IN 1871, I prepared for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences a Memoir of Count Rumford, to accompany an edition of his writings. During the twenty years which have elapsed since its publication very many interesting additional papers have come into my hands, either written by or relating to Count Rumford, some of which I may now put to use. As this article, however, may find readers who know little or nothing about the remarkable man here recalled, it may be well to inweave the new material into a summary of his lift.
Our concern is with Rumford first as Benjamin Thompson. He came of the yeoman stock of the first company of the Massachusetts colonists under the lead of Winthrop. He was born March 26, 1753, under his grandfather’s roof, in a modest but substantial farmhouse, still standing, in what is now North Woburn. His father died when he was but twenty months old, and when he was three years old, his mother marrying again, he was taken to his stepfather’s home. There he was treated even indulgently, with wise and friendly oversight and guardianship. His early lot was that of the children of farmers with frugal means, whether orphaned or not, who, as soon as they could do any kind of helpful work about house or farm, did it as a matter of course. The law, in those sim
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