Sir Joseph Banks was requested by the council to return their sincere thanks to Count Rumford, and at the same time to inquire ‘how far improvements or discoveries in optics and chemistry might come under the Count’s views.’
Count Rumford wrote to Sir Joseph Banks, from Munich, April 20, 1797:
I think the premium should be limited to new discoveries tending to improve the theories of fire, of heat, of light, and of colours, and to new inventions and contrivances by which the generation and preservation and management of heat and of light may be facilitated. In as far, therefore, as chemical discoveries or improvements in optics answer any of these conditions they may, I think, fairly be considered as being within the limits assigned to the operation of the premium. The objects which I had more particularly in view to encourage, are such practical improvements in the generation and management of heat and light as tend directly and powerfully to increase the enjoyments and comforts of life, especially in the lower and more numerous classes of society.
The first award of the Rumford medal was made, in November 1802, to Count Rumford himself for his own discoveries on heat and light. In 1870 the award was made for the twenty-sixth time. Eleven foreigners have received the honour, and thus added to the reputation of the prize. The greatest English discoverer on the subject of light is not on the list, but when sending the medal to M. Fresnel (who was on his death-bed) in 1827, Young, as foreign secretary of the Royal Society, wrote to him: ‘I also should claim some right to participate in the compliment which is tacitly paid to myself in common with you by this adjudication, but, considering that more than a quarter of a century is passed since my principal experiments were made, I can only feel it a sort of anticipation of posthumous fame, which I have never particularly coveted.’
In order further to apply some of his scientific researches to practice in the spring of 1796, on the invitation of his friend Mr. Secretary Pelham, Rumford went to Dublin.
In the house of the Dublin Society he fitted up a laundry and a model kitchen for private families, and also a cottage fire-place, and a model lime-kiln in the courtyard of the house of the Society; also in the hall in which the meetings of the Royal Irish Academy are held he fitted up two chimney fire-places. He contrived a fire-place for heating one of the principal churches in Dublin, and he promised to give a plan for heating the superb new building destined for the meeting of the Irish House of Commons. In the Linen Hall at Dublin he fitted up an oblong square boiler as a model for bleachers.
He was made a member of the Royal Irish Academy and of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, and he received after he left the country the public thanks of the Grand Jury of the County of Dublin, and of the Lord Mayor of the city, as well as of the Lord Lieutenant as the head of the Government.
Upon his return to London he superintended some improvements at the Foundling Hospital for his friend Mr. Bernard, who was treasurer there. Roasters and boilers were put up, but he was obliged to return to Munich before the kitchens were entirely finished.
His daughter left America to join her father in England in January 1796. By her Colonel Baldwin wrote from Woburn, January 26, 1796:
In answer to your inquiry, I can say that it is my opinion that you can freely return to America, either with or without official leave from the State, as you may choose; and that you would realise a hearty welcome from all your old friends and citizens in general. I can say, for one, that there is not a person on earth that I should rejoice so much to see.