Dear Jim,
As I was looking through our book cases just now to find the
publishing date (1974) of the first Australian metric cook book,
Cookery the Australian Way, I discovered a reference that might
interest you given that you might still be in design and construction
mode.
It is The Forgotten Art of Building a Good Fireplace by Vrest Orton
(Published by Yankee, Dublin New Hampshire in MCMLXXIV). This is
subtitled: 'The story of Count Rumford & his fireplace designs that
have remained unchanged since 1795'.
I know of two fireplaces that have been built to Count Rumford's
designs here in Geelong, and their owners rave about them for the
smoke-free way that they efficiently turn the energy in wood into
useable heat in their homes. One of these Geelong designs has the
added feature of having a wood box that can be loaded from the outside
of the house ready to be unloaded right next to the fireplace.
This is not specifically a metric related posting so I will provide a
little history. Born as Benjamin Thompson in Woburn, Massachusetts.
Count Rumford was interested in the nature of heat energy and he lived
at a time when there was no real way to measure it. To quote from http://www.nndb.com/people/662/000104350/
:
In 1798 he presented to the Royal Society his "Enquiry concerning the
Source of Heat which is excited by Friction", in which he combated the
current view that heat was a material substance, and regarded it as a
mode of motion.
Joule's work on energy was built on this sort of foundation.
Count Rumford married Pierre Lavoisier's widow in Paris and so for a
time he was involved with the philosophes of Paris who were busy
devising the first legal metric system in the 1790s.
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
PO Box 305 Belmont 3216,
Geelong, Australia
Phone: 61 3 5241 2008
Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has
helped thousands of people and hundreds of companies upgrade to the
modern metric system smoothly, quickly, and so economically that they
now save thousands each year when buying, processing, or selling for
their businesses. Pat provides services and resources for many
different trades, crafts, and professions for commercial, industrial
and government metrication leaders in Asia, Europe, and in the USA.
Pat's clients include the Australian Government, Google, NASA, NIST,
and the metric associations of Canada, the UK, and the USA. See http://www.metricationmatters.com/
for more metrication information, contact Pat at [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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