Figure 3. Schematic of a refrigerator.

Personal Life and Career

Benjamin Thompson, born in Woburn, Massachusetts, in 1753, acquired a deep interest in books and scientific instruments as a youth, and matured into a person of great charm and intellect. In 1772 he received a position as a teacher in Concord, New Hampshire, where he soon met and rather quickly married Sarah Walker Rolfe, a wealthy widow fourteen years his senior, who had been charmed by his brilliant mind and dashing manners. Overnight his status changed to that of a country gentleman, managing his wife's estate and helping John Wentworth, the British governor of New Hampshire, with some agricultural experiments.

To reward Thompson, in 1773 Wentworth commissioned him a major in the New Hampshire militia. There Thompson acted as an informant for the British, so arousing the rancor of his fellow colonists that they...