Consider the following excerpt from an essay on the history of thermodynamics:
"In the late eighteenth century, orthodox caloric theory held that heat was an indestructible, weightless fluid occupying the interstices between matter. In his 1798 experiments, Benjamin Thompson (Count Rumford) observed that boring brass cannons generated a continuous, seemingly inexhaustible supply of frictional heat, which he demonstrated dramatically by boiling large vats of water using only the thermal output of dull borers. Rather than immediately abandoning caloric orthodoxy, however, contemporary caloric theorists maintained that friction merely liberated caloric latent within the severed metal shavings, dismissing Rumford's challenge until quantitative mechanical equivalences were established decades later."
Statement: In the context of the passage, the author references the boiling of large vats of water primarily to demonstrate the commercial and industrial utility of Thompson's cannon-boring apparatus.
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