Where Did Ben Franklin Invent The Lightning Rod
Ben Franklin had an unusual fascination to know about the natural radiance of thunderstorms and their vivacious luminosity. It was on a rainy day in 1746 in Boston, when Franklin first thought about electricity. To make his imagination a reality, he set a small home laboratory and started working. |
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His experiments started and it continued until the summers of 1747. He usually mention all his experiments and their outcome into his letters to a London based friend and fellow scientist - Peter Collinson, who was interested in publishing Ben Franklin’s work. In the following year, Ben for the first time, mentioned the words ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ to describe electricity instead of previously used words ‘vitreous’ and ‘resinous’.
Franklin was determined to prove the normal belief ‘lightening is electricity’ and by 1750, he began to think about the protecting measures as well. These measures could be applicable in saving people from the danger of lightening. Lightening Rod was an attempt in this direction only.
He illustrated about a long iron rod of eight to ten feet length with a sharpened end. He wrote in his letter to Collinson, ‘the electrical fire would, I think, be drawn out of a cloud silently, before it could come near enough to strike...’
After two years, Franklin decided to investigate his own lightening experiment. In the June of 1752, he accomplished his kite experiment in Philadelphia. He decided to fly a kite during thunderstorm and knotted a metal at the other end of insulated kite string. He thought to fly a kite because it could go closer to the clouds, therefore a kite could easily attract electrical charges. This was his most famous experiment, which gave birth to Lightening Rod.
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There is a long list of Ben Franklin’s invention. He had a simple formula for success. He believed that successful people worked just a little harder than other people. He usually invented things to make common life-style better. “Improving every-day life by improving things of common use”, this was the dictum behind Ben Franklin’s maximum inventions. 