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When an afternoon storm brewed up dark and threatening a few weeks later, Franklin
rushed to launch his kite. The wind howled and the clouds boiled. A cold rain pounded
down about Franklin’s upturned collar. The kite twisted and tore at the air like a rampaging
bull.
Then it happened. No, a lightning bolt did not strike the kite, as has often been reported. And a good thing, too. A French scientist was killed a few months later by a lightning strike when he tried to repeat Franklin’s experiment. No, what happened that stormy
afternoon was that the twine began to glow a faint blue. The twine’s fibers lifted and bristled
straight out. Franklin could almost see electricity trickling down the twine as if electricity
were liquid.
Franklin reached out a cautious hand closer and closer to the key. And pop! A spark
leapt to his knuckle and shocked him—just like a Leyden jar.
Lightning and static were all the same, fluid electricity!
The practical outcome of this experiment was Franklin’s invention of the lightning
rod, credited with saving thousands of houses and lives over the next 100 years. More important, Franklin’s work inspired experiments by Volta, Faraday, Oersted, and others in
early part of the nineteenth century that further unraveled electricity’s nature.
Fun Facts: Popeye uses spinach to power his muscles. Now scientists
are looking to spinach as a power source for supplying electricity. Chemical substances extracted from spinach are among the ingredients needed
to make a solar cell that converts light into electricity.
More to Explore
Brands, H. W. Benjamin Franklin: The Original American. New York: Barnes &
Noble, 2004.
Fradin, Dennis. Who Was Benjamin Franklin? New York: Penguin Young Readers’
Group, 2002.
Isaacson, Walter. Benjamin Franklin: An American Life. New York: Simon &
Schuster, 2003.
McCormick, Ben. Ben Franklin: America’s Original Entrepreneur. New York:
McGraw-Hill, 2005.
Morgan, Edmund. Benjamin Franklin. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003.
Sandak, Cass. Benjamin Franklin. New York: Franklin Watts, , 1996.
Skousen, Mark, ed. Completed Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. Washington,
DC: Regnery Publishing, 2005.
Wright, Esmond. Franklin of Philadelphia. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1996.