FIREMAN'S DUTIES 23
Heat. All matter, whether solid, liquid, or gaseous, consists of molecules or atoms, which are in a state of continual vibration, and the result of this vibration is heat. The intensity of the neat evolved depends upon the degree of agitation to which the molecules are subject. Until as late as the beginning of the nineteenth century two rival theories in regard to the nature of heat had been advocated by scientists. The older of these theories was that heat was a material substance, a subtle elastic fluid termed caloric, and that this fluid penetrated matter as water penetrates a sponge. But this theory was shown to be false by the wonderful researches and experiments of Count Rumford at Munich, Bavaria, in 1798. By means of the friction between two heavy metallic bodies placed in a wooden trough filled with water, one of the pieces of metal being rotated by machinery driven by horses, Count Rumford succeeded in raising the temperature of the water in two and one-half hours from its original temperature of 60° to 212° F., the boiling point, thus demonstrating that heat is not a material substance, but that it is due to vibration or motion, an internal commotion among the molecules of matter. This theory, known as the Kinetic theory of heat, has since been generally accepted, although it was nearly fifty years after Rumford advocated it in a paper read before the Royal Society of Great Britain in 1798, before scientists generally became converted to this idea of the nature of heat, and the science of Thermo Dynamics was placed on a firm basis. During the period from 1840 to 1849 Dr. Joule made a series of experiments which not only confirmed the truth of Count Rumford 's theory that heat was not a material substance but a form of energy which may be
