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Ben Franklin, his kite, and lighting. Likely, you've seen or heard about Ben Franklin's Kite experiment somewhere. somewhere--a stamp, a textbook, or a popular science magazine. It's nearly as famous as the apple falling that fell on Sir Isaac Newton's head, but is did he really conduct the experiment? If so, was he the first? The first report of extracting energy from lightning was published in May 1752 from Thomas Dailbard and his group in France. They used a forty foot tall iron structure, not a kite. A few months later Jacques De Roma, described his proposal to use "a child's toy" to test if electricity could be captured from the clouds. It was not until August of that year that Franklin published his own description. Although typically a man of detail, Franklin wrote how one could use a kite to capture electricity from the clouds during a storm. He described how easy it true?
would be to conduct the experiment, as if to convince readers to try. In fact, a few months after his publication he published a call to his readers for their own experiences with different materials, maybe the first example of #citizenscience?
Critics of Franklin's news story called for a more accurate reporting of experiments beyond that of a news story. De Romas published a detailed account of his experiments with kites and electricity in 1753, down to exact measurement of string (or copper wire) used. Despite such a detailed account, De Romas was forced to argue to the Paris Academy of Sciences that he was the first to conduct the experiment. In 1764, a committee de Romas as
They described a Franklin's friend and fellow scientist Peter Collinson sent him an electricity tube, Franklin became interested in the subject and started investigating how charged objects interact. He hypothesized that lightning was a large spark created by charged forces. In June 1752, he supposedly set out to prove that theory by waiting atop the Christ Church in Philadelphia, hoping to attract lightning with a kite, a house key, and Leyden jar.
