# Did Ben Franklin... **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [October 26, 2003, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ben-franklin/209720 "2003-10-26T21:45:03Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![if6was9](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/e47c2d/32.png) [@if6was9](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/if6was9)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2003, 9:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ben-franklin/209720/1 "2003-10-26T21:45:03Z")
REALLY fly a kite with a key in a storm? ---
**Author:** ![Rhino](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/a5b964/32.png) [@Rhino](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rhino)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2003, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ben-franklin/209720/2 "2003-10-26T21:50:18Z")
Yes , I think I read that he did and that he was very, very lucky to live to write about it. He was quite important in researching electricity. ---
**Author:** ![KP](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/a9adbd/32.png) [@KP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/KP)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2003, 11:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ben-franklin/209720/3 "2003-10-26T23:34:27Z")
_ **Yes , I think I read that he did…** _ LOL! Maybe that shouldn’t have cracked me up the way it did, but I guess I was just in the right mood. It’s so completely counter to the founding and guiding spirit of the Straight Dope. There are, of course, many reasonably authoritative sources that do confirm this story, such as the [U.S. Centennial of Flight Commission, in partnership with The Franklin Institute Online](http://www.centennialofflight.gov/2003FF/lightning/history.html), however, the [Franklin Institute does note](http://www.fi.edu/qa99/attic3/): _ **"Surprisingly, he never wrote letters about the legendary kite experiment; someone else wrote the only account 15 years after it took place."** _ Now, I’ll concede that as an ardent amateur (and professional) scientist myself, I’ve done quite a few ‘damnfool’ experiments that I really don’t feel like owning up to, but I’ve always been a bit skeptical of that one particular experiment. It would not have taken many neurons to think of the voltage (and discomfort) of the smaller electrical arcs he’d already experienced, and guess that a spark that was miles long might be something to stay away from. Franklin was well aware of hundreds of historical stories of the damage inflicted by lightning (an aspect always highlighted in the retelling). Recall that, as the inventor of the lightning rod ([whose dubious benefits were noted by Cecil](http://www.straightdope.com/columns/010824.html), he extolled Lightning’s public safety risks. Fires, shattered chimneys and molten spots on lead and copper roofs were extremely well known to the founder of the first volunteer fire brigade in the US – he’d certainly have known of many eyewitness accounts of deaths and fires caused by lightning. Moreover, _inserting his body in the proposed circuit would have produced no theoretical or practical benefit!_ It would have made as much sense to insert a horse in the middle of an experiment in fluid dynamics On the other hand, some of his [better-conceived, self-recorded experiments](http://www.fi.edu/franklin/bells.html) would also be considered hideously (if slightly less directly) dangerous, so maybe he just wanted to ‘feel for himself’ to provide personal confirmation, rather than rely on impersonal devices. I can readily see why he might later decide not to publicize that particular experiment, given the huge body of other, less ‘damn-fool stupid’, evidence in his experiments and historical scientific knowledge of the time. The Franklin Institute also offers the following [bibliography](http://www.fi.edu/pieces/hongell/bibliography.htm), suited for children and adults. ---
**Author:** ![NinjaChick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/71c47a/32.png) [@NinjaChick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NinjaChick)\ **Post date:** [October 26, 2003, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ben-franklin/209720/4 "2003-10-26T23:37:29Z")
PBS ran a very interesting mini-series on Franklin a bit ago. Apparently, some historians believe that Franklin knew way too much about electricity to conduct\* the experiment himself, and watched from a distance as he had someone else do it for him. There’s a quite ugly statue comemorating it at the foot of the Ben Franklin Bridge in Philadelphia. Of course, every other thing in Philly is named after Franklin. \*sorry. Didn’t realize that that could be a pun 'til I typed it, had to keep it. ---
**Author:** ![bonzer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/45deac/32.png) [@bonzer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bonzer)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2003, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ben-franklin/209720/5 "2003-10-27T00:26:56Z")
Well, the [Autobiography](http://earlyamerica.com/lives/franklin/chapt13/) certainly claims that he carried out _some_ experiment with a kite: > [@](#): > > What gave my book the more sudden and general celebrity, was the success of one of its proposed experiments, made by Messrs. Dalibard and De Lor at Marly, for drawing lightning from the clouds. This engag’d the public attention every where. M. de Lor, who had an apparatus for experimental philosophy, and lectur’d in that branch of science, undertook to repeat what he called the Philadelphia Experiments; and, after they were performed before the king and court, all the curious of Paris flocked to see them. I will not swell this narrative with an account of that capital experiment, nor of the infinite pleasure I receiv’d in the success of a similar one I made soon after with a kite at Philadelphia, as both are to be found in the histories of electricity. The “15 years after” account is by Priestley and [is quoted here](http://www.ushistory.org/franklin/kite/). That page, based on Carl van Doren’s biography, states that Franklin read this in manuscript and so presumably endorsed it. I suspect it’s the _History and Present State of Electricity_, but Priestley actually only seems to have sent Franklin a _printed_ copy of that - see the remarks about it in the _Autobiography of Joseph Priestley_, Adams&Dart, 1970, p90.[Becker’s entry](http://tigger.uic.edu/~rjensen/franklin.htm) for the _Dictionary of American Biography_ goes slightly further and claims that there is a letter describing the experiment. > [@](#): > > Franklin was not the first to suggest the identity of lightning and electricity; but he proposed a method of testing the theory by erecting an iron rod on a high tower or steeple (letter to Collinson, July 29, 1750; Writings, II, 426, 437). On May 10, 1752, Mr. Dalibard, who knew of Franklin’s proposed method through Collinson’s publication of Franklin’s letter in 1751, performed the experiment with success at Marley-la-Valle. The experiment was successfully repeated at Paris but failed in England. Franklin, not having the means of testing his own method, devised a simpler one. This was the famous kite experiment, performed by Franklin in the summer of 1752, and described by him in a letter to Collinson, Oct. 19 (Ibid., III, 99). These experiments, together with Collinson’s publication of his letters on the subject (Experiments and Observations on Electricity, Made at Philadelphia in America, by Mr. Benjamin Franklin, London, 1751, reprinted with additions, 1753, 1760-62. Ibid., I, 15-16), which were immediately translated into French, established Franklin’s fame as a scientist. I haven’t been able to find this particular letter to Collinson online, but it’s discussed in one of the quotations on [this page](http://staff.imsa.edu/~egge/physics/semester2/docs/franklin.pdf) (a pdf), which also quotes an earlier letter to him. ---
**Author:** ![Cardinal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cardinal/32/4000_2.png) [@Cardinal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cardinal)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2003, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ben-franklin/209720/6 "2003-10-27T01:08:41Z")
I read (I thought in a SD column) that he flew a kite, but it was not struck by lightning. He got a small charge built up in the key that had traveled down the string. I think this was due to the voltage differences that make lightning when they get really bad. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2003, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ben-franklin/209720/7 "2003-10-27T02:00:58Z")
Warning: Don’t try this at home! ---
**Author:** ![Askance](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/askance/32/8281_2.png) [@Askance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Askance)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2003, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ben-franklin/209720/8 "2003-10-27T04:28:15Z")
If you’ve got lightning in your home, you have bigger problems than whether you should be flying a kite in there or not. ---
**Author:** ![AskNott](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asknott/32/5790_2.png) [@AskNott](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AskNott)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2003, 12:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ben-franklin/209720/9 "2003-10-27T12:52:43Z")
Wasn’t there a storage device involved? I read somewhere that Franklin used the kite-in-the-storm to charge a “Leyton jar.” (which I probably have spelled wrong) I was taught in school that the jar was a battery, but I think it might be more rightly called a capacitor. ---
**Author:** ![Olentzero](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/90ced4/32.png) [@Olentzero](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Olentzero)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2003, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ben-franklin/209720/10 "2003-10-27T14:41:57Z")
It’s [Leyden jar](http://www.alaska.net/~natnkell/leyden.htm). And I just had to pick this out: > [@](#): > > _Originally posted by bonzer_ > **undertook to repeat what he called the Philadelphia Experiments** So, did, like Franklin achieve temporary invisibility or travel forward through time? 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2003, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ben-franklin/209720/11 "2003-11-01T16:32:52Z")
There’s a book just out, [Bolt of Fate: Benjamin Franklin and His Electric Kite Hoax, by Tom Tucker](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1891620703/qid=1067704858/sr=1-3/ref=sr_1_3/104-5338877-7623924?v=glance&s=books), that insists that the whole thing was a deliberate hoax. > [@](#): > > “He was also a splendid master of the hoax.” And, notes Tucker, Franklin had reason to perpetrate a hoax on the scientific establishment, then embodied in Britain’s Royal Society, where the colonial printer was not taken seriously as a scientist. Franklin’s legendary electric kite experiment, Tucker asserts, was a myth propagated by Franklin himself that had repercussions even for the Revolution: the British feared that Franklin had created an electric superweapon that, in the words of Franklin’s contemporary, Horace Walpole, “would reduce St. Paul’s to a handful of ashes.” Tucker bases his hoax theory on a reading of primary sources. ---
**Author:** ![Innanna](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ecd19e/32.png) [@Innanna](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Innanna)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2003, 6:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ben-franklin/209720/12 "2003-11-01T18:23:20Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Exapno Mapcase \* > \*\*Tucker asserts, was a myth propagated by Franklin himself that had repercussions even for the Revolution: the British feared that Franklin had created an electric superweapon that, in the words of Franklin’s contemporary, Horace Walpole, "would reduce St. Paul’s to a handful of ashes. \*\* So (and I am going to burn in Doper heck for this, but) 1770’s style Death rays? ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [November 1, 2003, 7:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-ben-franklin/209720/13 "2003-11-01T19:20:22Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by NinjaChick \* > \*_PBS ran a very interesting mini-series on Franklin a bit ago. Apparently, some historians believe that Franklin knew way too much about electricity to conduct_ the experiment himself, and watched from a distance as he had someone else do it for him. \*\* Yes, it was a Mr. B. Bunny, if memory serves.