Most established scientists, such as William Henry, as well as Thomas Thomson, believed that there was enough uncertainty in the caloric theory to allow its adaptation to account for the new results. It had certainly proved robust and adaptable up to that time. Furthermore, Thomson, Jöns Jakob Berzelius, and Antoine César Becquerel observed that electricity could be indefinitely generated by friction. No educated scientist of the time was willing to hold that electricity was not a fluid. Ultimately, Rumford's claim of the "inexhaustible" supply of heat was a reckless extrapolation from the study. Charles Haldat made some penetrating criticisms of the reproducibility of Rumford's results and it is possible to see the whole experiment as somewhat tendentious. However, the experiment inspired the work of James Prescott Joule in the 1840s. Joule's more exact measurements were pivotal in establishing the kinetic theory at the expense of caloric. References Benjamin Count of Rumford (1798) "An inquiry concerning the source of the heat which is excited by friction," Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 88 : 80–102. Cardwell (1971) p.99 Rumford (1804) "An enquiry concerning the nature of heat and the mode of its communication" Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society p.77 Cardwell (1971) pp99-100 From p. 100 of Rumford's paper of 1798: "Before I finish this paper, I would beg leave to observe, that although, in treating the subject I have endeavoured to investigate, I have made no mention of the names of those who have gone over the same ground before me, nor of the success of their labours; this omission has not been owing to any want of respect for my predecessors, but was merely to avoid prolixity, and to be more at liberty to pursue, without interruption, the natural train of my own ideas." In his Novum Organum (1620), Francis Bacon concludes that heat is the motion of the particles composing matter. In Francis Bacon, Novum Organum (London, England: William Pickering, 1850), from page 164: " … Heat appears to be Motion." From p. 165: " … the very essence of Heat, or the Substantial self of Heat, is motion and nothing else, … " From p. 168: " … Heat is not a uniform Expansive Motion of the whole, but of the small particles of the body; … " "Of the mechanical origin of heat and cold" in: Robert Boyle, Experiments, Notes, &c. About the Mechanical