Meantime there is another line of application of the ideas which the low-temperature work has brought into prominence which has a peculiar interest in the present connection because of its singularly Rumfordian cast, so to speak, I mean the idea of the insulation of cooled or heated objects in the ordinary affairs of life, as, for example, in cooking. The subject was a veritable hobby with the founder of the Royal Institution all his life. He studied the heat-transmitting and heat-reflecting properties of various substances, including such directly practical applications as rough surfaces _versus_ smooth surfaces for stoves, the best color for clothing in summer and in winter, and the like. He promulgated his ideas far and wide, and demonstrated all over Europe the extreme wastefulness of current methods of using fuel. To a certain extent his ideas were adopted everywhere, yet on the whole the public proved singularly apathetic; and, especially in America, an astounding wastefulness in the use of fuel is the general custom now as it was a century ago. A French cook will prepare an entire dinner with a splinter of wood, a handful of charcoal, and a half-shovelful of coke, while the same fuel would barely suffice to kindle the fire in an American cook-stove. Even more wonderful is the German stove, with its great bulk of brick and mortar and its glazed tile surface, in which, by keeping the heat in the room instead of sending it up the chimney, a few bits of compressed coal do the work of a hodful.
It is one merit of the low-temperature work, I repeat, to have called attention to the possibilities of heat insulation in application to "the useful purposes of life." If Professor Dewar's vacuum vessel can reduce the heat-transmitting capacity of a vessel by almost ninety-seven per cent., why should not the same principle, in modified form, be applied to various household appliances--to ice-boxes, for example, and to cooking utensils, even to ovens and cook-stoves? Even in the construction of the walls of houses the principles of heat insulation might advantageously be given far more attention than is usual at present; and no doubt will be so soon as the European sense of economy shall be brought home to the people of the land of progress and inventions. The principles to be applied are already clearly to hand, thanks largely to the technical workers with low temperatures. It remains now for the practical inventors to make the "application to the useful purposes of life." The technical scientists, ignoring the example which Rumford and a few others have set, have usually no concern with such uninteresting concerns.