apparatus was set in action. The temperature of the water on commencing
was 60 deg..

"The result of this beautiful experiment," writes Rumford, "was very
striking, and the pleasure it afforded me amply repaid me for all the
trouble I had had in contriving and arranging the complicated machinery
used in making it. The cylinder had been in motion but a short time,
when I perceived, by putting my hand into the water, and touching the
outside of the cylinder, that heat was generated.

"At the end of one hour the fluid, which weighed 18.77 pounds, or two
and one-half gallons, had its temperature raised forty-seven degrees,
being now 107 deg..

"In thirty minutes more, or one hour and thirty minutes after the
machinery had been set in motion, the heat of the water was 142 deg..

"At the end of two hours from the beginning, the temperature was 178 deg..

"At two hours and twenty minutes it was 200 deg., and at two hours and
thirty minutes it _actually boiled_!"

"It would be difficult to describe the surprise and astonishment
expressed in the countenances of the bystanders on seeing so large a
quantity of water heated, and actually made to boil, without any fire.
Though, there was nothing that could be considered very surprising in
this matter, yet I acknowledge fairly that it afforded me a degree of
childish pleasure which, were I ambitious of the reputation of a grave
philosopher, I ought most certainly rather to hide than to discover."

He then carefully estimates the quantity of heat possessed by each
portion of his apparatus at the conclusion of the experiment, and,
adding all together, finds a total sufficient to raise 26.58 pounds of
ice-cold water to its boiling point, or through 180 deg. Fahrenheit. By
careful calculation, he finds this heat equal to that given out by the
combustion of 2,303.8 grains (equal to four and eight-tenths ounces
troy) of wax.

He then determines the "_celerity_" with which the heat was generated,
summing up thus: "From the results of these computations, it appears
that the quantity of heat produced equably, or in a continuous stream,
if I may use the expression, by the friction of the blunt steel borer
against the bottom of the hollow metallic cylinder, was _greater_ than
that produced in the combustion of nine _wax-candles_, each
three-quarters of an inch in diameter, all burning together with clear
bright flames.

"One horse would have been equal to the work performed, though t