The Count's Thermal Underpants

Benjamin Thompson, also known as Count Rumford, was an American and a scientist, a spy for the British, a Count of the Holy Roman Empire and an inventor. He invented the cooking range, the drip coffee maker, the pressure cooker and thermal underwear. He was charged with conspiring against American interests during the war of independence and although no evidence was ever brought forward he fled to England anyway, leaving behind a wife and infant daughter. He worked for the Bavarian government, introduced a welfare system in Munich and re-invigorated the German army by reviewing payment schedules, giving raises and free education to the soldiers. He saw the creation of the Rumford Medal, received by Thomas Edison, Louis Pasteur and Michael Faraday from both the Royal Society of Great Britain and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. When he died his money was spread around although Harvard University received the bulk of it. Known as a scientist and a father of heat studies, he was called a coward and a spy by others, remembered as a irritating and arrogant man who revolutionized the kitchen with his advanced designs for stovetop cooking methods. He is reputed to have had arrested 2600 beggars and sent them to a workhouse to be taught how to support themselves. While contradictory, all these stories portray a man driven and ambitious, whose keen observations and skill in mechanics led to numerous inventions and social reforms throughout the world.

One of his designs, however, literally changed society in an unfathomable way. The Rumford Stove brought about a flat top cooking surface with variable temperatures and an advanced system for routing smoke out through a chimney. The fires could be banked by shutting off air supplies, thereby using less fuel, and no longer was the cook susceptible to burns from the open fire. All of this is pretty wonderful but think about how this revolutionized the food eaten then. With one fire pit came one meal. The expression 'pot luck' came about when visitors, arriving at mealtime were invited to the luck of the pot, a mish-mash of meat and vegetables which invariably had been on the fire for days. Now you could cook a different meal everyday. Not only that but you could cook things separately. The vegetables didn't have to go into the same pot as the meat and the frying pan became the tool of choice for your meal of choice.
Going to restaurant before this meant getting whichever roast had been put on the fire. Now you could order beef and your neighbor could order pork. Imagine. So, not only could you order whatever you wanted, you could have a cup of coffee brewed right before your eyes and make the trip quite comfortably, even through the winds of winter, wearing your thermal underwear.

In short, nothing I did yesterday would have been nearly so comfortable if it hadn't been for an arrogant American with British loyalties, a penchant for heat and a flair for underpants. Kind of makes me wonder.