Benjamin Franklin first outrage himself in 1746 , while conducting experiments on electrical energy with found objects from around his star sign . Six years later and on the dot 261 years ago today , the founding father flew a kite attached to a key and a silk typewriter ribbon in a electric storm and effectively trapped lightning in a jar . The experiment is now seen as a watershed moment in man ’s question to carry a force of nature once thought to be the wrath of God himself . It ’s also understood that Ben Franklin was pretty effing lucky he did n’t electrocute his bones on that fateful early June afternoon in 1752 . Based on what he ’d contribute to the nation in the twelvemonth after that , America is pretty lucky , too .
By the time Franklin bulge out try out with electrical energy , he ’d already find renown and portion as the author of Poor Richard ’s Almanack and was starting to get into science . Electricity was n’t a very well understood phenomenon at that point , though , so Franklin ’s enquiry proved to be fairly foundational . The early experimentation , expert believe , were enliven by other scientists ’ work and the shortcomings therein .
That former encounter with the dangers of electrical energy left an picture on Franklin . He discover the sensation as “ a general blow throughout my whole body from heading to foundation , which seemed within as well as without ; after which the first affair I take notice of was a tearing prompt shaking of my body . ” However , it did n’t dash him away . In the handful of years before his celebrated kite experimentation , Franklin contributed everything from designing the first electric battery designs to establishing some common nomenclature in the work of electricity . It ’s thanks to Franklin , for instance , that we pertain to plus and negative charge . Before him , they were known as “ vitreous ” and “ resinous ” charges . ( Those names do n’t quite have the same biff do they ? )
At a sure point , Franklin ’s enchantment about electrity shifted beyond mere curio to practically political celestial sphere like public safety . He want to know if there might be a room to keep church and other tall building from burning down during lightning storm and suppose that lighting was just one big discharge of static electrical energy . If this was the typesetter’s case , he thought , one ought to be able-bodied to tantalise lightning out of the clouds with a charge object placed high in the line . Like a metal rod on top of a spire with a cable stretching down to the ground . Or a kite with a key impound to it .
So Franklin and his 21 - twelvemonth - old Logos William befit up on June 10 , 1852 — some historiographer avert naming an accurate escort for the experimentation since the result was so vaguely documented — and guess into the storm . It should be known that Franklin was not the first to conduct this type of experiment . Just a month before Franklin ’s experiment in Philadelphia , French scientist Thomas - François Dalibard conducted an galvanising kite experiment of his own and possibly invented a lightning rod before Franklin , though he ’s not give credit for doing so . The reason for that might be explain strictly by the American do - it - all ’s showmanship . Franklin had a work up - in audience for his scientific story and was in general give at promoting his own employment .
Before he got to take credit for the kite experiment , though , Franklin had to survive it . to reduce the risk of burning , he opted for a kite on a ironical silk string over a metal rod attached to a building as the preferred method for attract lightning . An iron key was attached to the silk chain as well as a alloy wire that was spend into an electrically charged Leyden jar . Once the kite was flying luxuriously , Franklin hold on to a ironical silk ribbon attached to the string and took protection in a nearby b so that he would n’t get wet . Sure enough , the storm picked up , the air became charge , and Franklin successfully conducted electrical energy through his kite fishing tackle . Because he was holding a silk ribbon and not the actual string , Franklin avoid gravel shocked , though he said that he would catch a shock if he put his fingerbreadth close to the samara .
After the successful experiment , Franklin knew that his lightning pole idea would work . Again , he was n’t the only one experiment with the idea , though his notion that the gat should be sharp on the end in oder to attract lightning was significant . The first of these so - called Franklin lightning rods start up popping up across Philadelphia in the 1850s and one finally graced the top of the State House in Maryland . Franklin write of the devices ’ importance :
May not the knowledge of this might of points be of use to mankind , in carry on menage , churches , ship , etc . , from the throw of lightning , by conduct us to pay back , on the highest parts of those edifices , upright rods of Fe made sharp as a needle … Would not these channelise rod probably draw the electric fire silently out of a swarm before it came nigh enough to take , and thereby secure us from that most sudden and terrible rascality !
You ’ve got to bed that last bit . Because Franklin was a bit of a bad hat . The kite experiment and lightning pole campaign proved to auspicate Franklin ’s involvement in the American colony ’ independency movement . King George III , you see , was a fan of candid lightning rod cell , not the pointed ones that Franklin recommended . “ The prefer pointed lightning gat expressed bread and butter for Franklin ’s theories of protecting public buildings and the rejection of possibility sustain by the King , ” says the Franklin Institute . “ The English recollect this was just another means for the boom Colony to be unruly to them . ”
It turns out the English were kind of correct . In the decades that followed Franklin ’s kite experiment , the Americans would become do it not just for their audacity in the face of authority but also for their seemingly illimitable capacity to innovate and improve young technologies . First come up electricity , then steam engines , then the telephone set , the plane , the TV , the cyberspace , the personal estimator , Steve Jobs .
Our nation owes a lot to that funny - hirsute man on the hundred - dollar bill who spent a serious day fly a kite over a fourth of a millenium ago . Which reminds me : Not enough the great unwashed fly kites these day or conduct impromptu scientific experiments . There should be an app for that .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZ7FUdwHrzc
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