“He started to say he was feeling guilty with all the pleasure he was getting from working with electricity, and he wished he could do something useful with it,” said Rutgers historian James Delbourgo, author of A Most Amazing Scene of Wonders: Electricity and Enlightenment in Early America. “The idea was that if we understood enough about how the world works we could find ways to manipulate nature to make a better world,” said Carlson.Įarly on, Franklin didn’t seem to know how his study of electricity would lead to anything practical. The benefits of basic science had been extolled more than 100 years before Franklin’s day by British thinker Francis Bacon. If he hadn’t been so famous as an inventor and founding father, “Franklin would be recognized as the greatest scientist of his age,” said physicist and Franklin enthusiast Shawn Carlson, founder of the Society for Amateur Scientists and, more recently, the LabRats Science Education Program.Īs Franklin’s thoughts went from laboratory experiments to lightning rods, he also tipped the scales in a debate that still rages today over the value of basic, curiosity-driven science. WHYY thanks our sponsors - become a WHYY sponsorīut historians and scientists agree on one thing - whether he did or didn’t fly that kite, Franklins’ achievements as a scientist were enormous and under-appreciated. Others say Franklin was much too honest to have falsely reported that he pulled it off. Some say he was much too smart to have tried such a foolhardy, death-defying stunt. And yet, Franklin never wrote up the results of his most famous experiment beyond a vague newspaper account, which didn’t make clear whether he or someone else actually channeled electriharges from the sky to his famous key.Īnd so, more than 250 years after the fact, Franklin remains himself a lightning rod for controversy among historians. The idea was to prove that clouds could be electrified and that mankind could exert some control over lightning. Bookmark us at http ://or follow it on Twitter all his achievements as a statesman, inventor and scientist, Ben Franklin etched himself into the popular imagination as a man who dared fly a kite in a thunderstorm. Check Lightning Rod for news about science and people who do science in this region and beyond.
We are delighted to welcome Faye Flam, a distinguished science writer, to our site. In the inaugural post of Lightning Rod, author Faye Flam explores whether Ben Franklin’s “kite and key” story can hold up to modern scrutiny.Įditor’s note: This story launches a new blog for NewsWorks.
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