"found that the subjects experimented on lost weight, thus apparently showing that electricity quickened the excretions. The efficacy of electric shocks in cases of paralysis was tested in the county hospital at Shrewsbury, England, with rather poor success. Benjamin Franklin promoted his investigations of electricity and theories through the famous, though extremely dangerous, experiment of having his son fly a kite through a storm-threatened sky. A key attached to the kite string sparked and charged a Leyden jar, thus establishing the link between lightning and electricity. Following these experiments, he invented a lightning rod. It is either Franklin (more frequently)"
"crowned his exertions"". William Snow Harris Sir William Snow Harris (1 April 1791 – 22 January 1867) was a British physician and electrical researcher, nicknamed Thunder-and-Lightning Harris, and noted for his invention of a successful system of lightning conductors for ships. It took many years of campaigning, research and successful testing before the British Royal Navy changed to Harris's conductors from their previous less effective system. One of the successful test vessels was which survived lightning strikes unharmed on her famous voyage with Charles Darwin. Harris was born in Plymouth on 1 April 1791. His family was well established as"
"in a letter to Collinson dated October 19, 1752. A man by the name of G. W. Richman was killed in 1753 from electrocution doing the kite experiment. Franklin had proven that lightning bolts and electricity were one and the same. He also showed that this ""electric fluid"" was attracted to a sharply pointed object high in the sky. An iron rod could have the other end put into the ground to create a path for safe conduction of the high voltage electricity. Thus, a way of diverting lightning bolts from wooden buildings and preventing them from going aflame due"
"for an experiment to prove that lightning is electricity by flying a kite in a storm that appeared capable of becoming a lightning storm. On May 10, 1752, Thomas-François Dalibard of France conducted Franklin's experiment using a iron rod instead of a kite, and he extracted electrical sparks from a cloud. On June 15 , 1752, Franklin may possibly have conducted his well-known kite experiment in Philadelphia, successfully extracting sparks from a cloud. Franklin described the experiment in the ""Pennsylvania Gazette"" on October 19, 1752, without mentioning that he himself had performed it. This account was read to the Royal"
"reported by Hopkinson. Franklin wondered if this discovery could be used in a practical invention. He thought something could be made to attract the electricity out of storm clouds, but first he had to verify that lightning bolts really are giant electric sparks. He wrote Collinson and Cadwallader Colden letters about this theory. The 1752, Franklin letter to Collinson of October 19 of the kite experiment is noted by historian LeMay as a basis how it proved that lightning was electricity. Tom Tucker of the Isothermal Community College doubts the account, however, because of ambiguities in the account and points"
"William Snow Harris Sir William Snow Harris (1 April 1791 – 22 January 1867) was a British physician and electrical researcher, nicknamed Thunder-and-Lightning Harris, and noted for his invention of a successful system of lightning conductors for ships. It took many years of campaigning, research and successful testing before the British Royal Navy changed to Harris's conductors from their previous less effective system. One of the successful test vessels was which survived lightning strikes unharmed on her famous voyage with Charles Darwin. Harris was born in Plymouth on 1 April 1791. His family was well established as solicitors in the"
"in Thomas Browne's ""Pseudodoxia Epidemica"" of 1646. Further work was conducted in the 17th and early 18th centuries by Otto von Guericke, Robert Boyle, Stephen Gray and C. F. du Fay. Later in the 18th century, Benjamin Franklin conducted extensive research in electricity, selling his possessions to fund his work. In June 1752 he is reputed to have attached a metal key to the bottom of a dampened kite string and flown the kite in a storm-threatened sky. A succession of sparks jumping from the key to the back of his hand showed that lightning was indeed electrical in nature."
"of Franklin's historic kite experiment, the identity of the electricity developed by rubbing and by electrostatic machines (frictional electricity) with lightning had not been generally established. Dr. Wall, Abbot Nollet, Hauksbee, Stephen Gray and John Henry Winkler had indeed suggested the resemblance between the phenomena of ""electricity"" and ""lightning"", Gray having intimated that they only differed in degree. It was doubtless Franklin, however, who first proposed tests to determine the sameness of the phenomena. In a letter to Peter Comlinson of London, on 19 October 1752, Franklin, referring to his kite experiment, wrote, On 10 May 1742 Thomas-François Dalibard, at"
"the concept of electrical ground. Franklin did not perform this experiment in the way that is often pictured in popular literature, flying the kite and waiting to be struck by lightning, as it would have been dangerous. Instead he used the kite to collect some electric charge from a storm cloud, showing that lightning was electrical. On October 19 in a letter to England with directions for repeating the experiment, Franklin wrote: Franklin's electrical experiments led to his invention of the lightning rod. He said that conductors with a sharp rather than a smooth point could discharge silently, and at"
"conductive rods to attract lightning to a leyden jar, an early form of capacitor. Such an experiment was carried out in May 1752 at Marly-la-Ville in northern France by Thomas-François Dalibard. An attempt to replicate the experiment killed Georg Wilhelm Richmann in Saint Petersburg in August 1753; he was thought to be the victim of ball lightning. Franklin himself is said to have conducted the experiment in June 1752, supposedly on the top of the spire on Christ Church in Philadelphia. However, the spire at Christ Church was not added until 1754. Franklin's kite experiment was performed in Philadelphia in"
"the concept that electricity is attracted to points. Franklin then carried the idea a step forward and surmised that a pointed iron rod high above a rooftop would attract a lightning bolt, if the bolt was of electricity. Frenchman Thomas-Francois d'Alibald did the actual experiment May 10, 1752, as Franklin had suggested and lightning struck the iron rod. In London it was repeated in Spital Square on July 20, 1752, and again in Chelmsford, Essex, on August 12, 1752. The electricity attraction from a lightning storm was also done by Franklin himself in the kite experiment that he talked about"
"to lightning hits had been discovered. Franklin's lightning conductor invention, with its lightning rod uppermost point, became a model for the lightning-protection system used in America in the eighteenth century. King Louis XV honored Franklin after seeing some of the electrical experiments done in the royal palace at St. Germain near Paris, France. However physicist Jean-Antoine Nollet (1700–1770), a skeptic who had published his own theory on electricity, declared Franklin's ideas were wrong. He claimed in 1753 that Franklin's lightning rod was not only dangerous but useless and would attract lightning bolts to wooden buildings, causing them to be hit"
"theory of electricity. In the 18th century, Benjamin Franklin conducted extensive research in electricity, selling his possessions to fund his work. In June 1752 he is reputed to have attached a metal key to the bottom of a dampened kite string and flown the kite in a storm-threatened sky. A succession of sparks jumping from the key to the back of his hand showed that lightning was indeed electrical in nature. He also explained the apparently paradoxical behavior of the Leyden jar as a device for storing large amounts of electrical charge, by coming up with the single fluid, two"
"western states lay outside of the various Standard Oil's production and refining networks, cities like Long Beach, California, Dallas, Texas, and Houston, Texas emerged as major centers for refining and managing these new fields under companies like Sunoco, Texaco, and Gulf Oil. Benjamin Franklin pioneered the study of electricity by being the first to describe positive and negative charges, as well as advancing the principle of conservation of charge. Franklin is best known for the apocryphal feat of flying a kite in thunderstorm to prove that lightning is a form of electricity which, in turn, led to the invention of"
"Jacques de Romas Jacques de Romas (13 October 1713 – 21 January 1776) was a French physicist. He held a judiciary office in the présidial of his lifelong hometown of Nérac. As a hobbyist, he was a polymath scientist until specialising in electricity. He became known for physical experiments during thunderstorms and in 1750 proposed a connection between lightning and electricity when the chateau of Tampouy was hit by lightning strike. The same decade, Romas conducted the kite experiment that Benjamin Franklin proposed in 1750 in a letter to Peter Collinson, but that had not yet reached France. Raising a"
"was discovered by the Scottish inventor Andrew Gordon, Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Erfurt, Germany . About 1742 he invented a device known as the ""electric chimes"", which was widely described in textbooks of electricity. Franklin made use of Gordon's idea by connecting one bell to his pointed lightning rod, attached to a chimney, and a second bell to the ground. One of his papers contains the following description: In September 1752, I erected an Iron Rod to draw the Lightning down into my House, in order to make some Experiments on it, with two Bells to"
"and from the electric fire thus obtained, he kindled spirits, and performed all other electrical experiments which are usually exhibited by an excited globe or tube."" The kite was not struck by visible lightning; had it been, Franklin would almost certainly have been killed. However, Franklin did notice that loose threads of the kite string were repelling each other and deduced that the Leyden jar was being charged. He moved his hand near the key and observed an electric spark, proving the electric nature of lightning. The Kite Experiment was described in The Pennsylvania Gazette, October 19, 1752 as follows:"
"wire-wrapped kite in a thunderstorm, Romas proved the electrical nature of lightning. During his experiment, he noticed ten feet long sparks and explosions. He also reported that during a repeat performance in front of a larger audience, he received severe jolts that were more intense than all he received before during experiments with Leyden jars. For this reason, he performed later experiments only with separately grounded conductors and kites that he handled via glass rods. On 12 July 1752, he wrote a letter to the académie of Bordeaux with a first report about his experiences with a grounded rod during"
"Lightning detection A lightning detector is a device that detects lightning produced by thunderstorms. There are three primary types of detectors: ""ground-based"" systems using multiple antennas, ""mobile systems"" using a direction and a sense antenna in the same location (often aboard an aircraft), and ""space-based systems"". The first such device was invented in 1894 by Alexander Stepanovich Popov. It also was the first radio receiver in the world. Ground-based and mobile detectors calculate the direction and severity of lightning from the current location using radio direction-finding techniques along with an analysis of the characteristic frequencies emitted by lightning. Ground-based systems"
"original site on 13 February 2010. A school and several streets in the region are named after Romas. Jacques de Romas Jacques de Romas (13 October 1713 – 21 January 1776) was a French physicist. He held a judiciary office in the présidial of his lifelong hometown of Nérac. As a hobbyist, he was a polymath scientist until specialising in electricity. He became known for physical experiments during thunderstorms and in 1750 proposed a connection between lightning and electricity when the chateau of Tampouy was hit by lightning strike. The same decade, Romas conducted the kite experiment that Benjamin Franklin"
"of ""Electricity, Galvanism and Magnetism"" were published between 1848 and 1856 and went through several editions. When he died in Plymouth on 22 January 1867 he had a ""Treatise on Frictional Electricity"" in preparation, and it was published later that year. The lightning rod invented by Benjamin Franklin in 1752 suggested a way of avoiding the common problem of lightning causing damage to the wooden sailing ships of the period. In Britain, the Royal Navy chose a protection system with a chain draped into the sea from the top of the mast as a lightning conductor. This system proved unsatisfactory:"
"Thomas-François Dalibard Thomas-François Dalibard (born in Crannes-en-Champagne, France in 1709, died in 1778) was a French physicist. He first met U.S. scientist Benjamin Franklin in 1767 during one of Franklin's visits to France and it is said that they became friends. In 1750, Benjamin Franklin published a proposal for an experiment to determine if lightning was electricity. He proposed extending a conductor into a cloud that appeared to have the potential to become a thunderstorm. If electricity existed in the cloud, the conductor could be used to extract it. Dalibard, who at the suggestion of Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon,"
"The standard account of Franklin's experiment is disputed by science historian Tom Tucker in 2003. According to Tucker, Franklin never performed the experiment, and the kite as described is incapable of performing its alleged role. Kite experiment The kite experiment is a scientific experiment in which a kite with a pointed, conductive wire attached to its apex is flown near thunder clouds to collect electricity from the air and conduct it down the wet kite string to the ground. It was proposed and may have been conducted by Benjamin Franklin with the assistance of his son William Franklin. The experiment's"
"a lightning storm. On 14 May 1753, his first kite experiment is said to have taken place with locals as his only audience. Other reports tell of his first public experiments on 7 July 1753 on a road near Nérac. The particulars of his experiments were however often confused later, and the encyclopedia of Chassang simply states that his experiments took place „since 1757“. It is also reported that he installed lightning rods later in the 1750s in his home region. Unlike many intellectuals of his era, the amateur physicist didn't travel much out of his home region. When he"
"attributed to the Greek philosopher Aristotle in the fourth century BC, and an early speculation was that it was caused by the collision of clouds. Subsequently, numerous other theories were proposed. By the mid-19th century, the accepted theory was that lightning produced a vacuum. In the 20th century a consensus evolved that thunder must begin with a shock wave in the air due to the sudden thermal expansion of the plasma in the lightning channel. The temperature inside the lightning channel, measured by spectral analysis, varies during its 50 μs existence, rising sharply from an initial temperature of about 20,000"
"suggested as a source of available energy, or communications platform. The global electrical circuit is also applied to the study human health and air pollution, due of the interaction of negative ions and aerosols. The effect of global warming, and temperature-sensitivity of the Earth's electrical circuit is unknown. In the 18th century, scientists began understanding the link between lightning and electricity. In addition to the iconic kite experiments of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas-François Dalibard, some early studies of electric charges in a ""cloudless atmosphere"" were done by John Canton, Giambatista Beccaria, and John Read. In 1752, Louis-Guillaume Le Monnier observed"
"first brought to Europe by Marco Polo towards the end of the 13th century, and kites were brought back by sailors from Japan and Malaysia in the 16th and 17th centuries. Konrad Kyeser described dragon kites in ""Bellifortis"" about 1400 AD. Although kites were initially regarded as mere curiosities, by the 18th and 19th centuries they were being used as vehicles for scientific research. In 1752 Benjamin Franklin published an account of a kite experiment to prove that lightning was caused by electricity. Kites were also instrumental in the research of the Wright brothers, and others, as they developed the"
"still popular claims that Prokop Diviš invented the lightning rod. Indeed, his free-standing apparatus in 1754 was probably better grounded than Franklin's experimental lightning rods at that time. The ""weather-machine"" failed, however, the common purpose of lightning rods: to actually protect a building; while the grounding chains were not remotely secure. Prokop Diviš Dom Prokop Diviš, O.Praem. () (26 March 1698 – 21 December 1765) was a Czech canon regular, theologian and natural scientist. In an attempt to prevent thunderstorms from occurring, he inadvertently constructed one of the first grounded lightning rods. He was born Václav Divíšek on 26 March"
"rather than radio waves. As early as 1886, German physicist Heinrich Hertz showed that radio waves could be reflected from solid objects. In 1895, Alexander Popov, a physics instructor at the Imperial Russian Navy school in Kronstadt, developed an apparatus using a coherer tube for detecting distant lightning strikes. The next year, he added a spark-gap transmitter. In 1897, while testing this equipment for communicating between two ships in the Baltic Sea, he took note of an interference beat caused by the passage of a third vessel. In his report, Popov wrote that this phenomenon might be used for detecting"
"work. The first lightning conductors on ships were supposed to be hoisted when lightning was anticipated, and had a low success rate. In 1820 William Snow Harris invented a successful system for fitting lightning protection to the wooden sailing ships of the day, but despite successful trials which began in 1830, the British Royal Navy did not adopt the system until 1842, by which time the Imperial Russian Navy had already adopted the system. In the 1990s, the 'lightning points' were replaced as originally constructed when the Statue of Freedom atop the United States Capitol building in Washington, D.C. was"
"pleasant people, foremost of whom is Mr. Thunder & Lightning Harris, whom I daresay you have heard of."" In his diary he noted that on the evening of 21 November he attended a ""popular lecture from Mr Harris on his lightning conductors"" at the Athenaeum. Harris used an ""Electric machine"" for a thunder cloud and a tub of water for the sea, then with ""a toy for a line of battle ship he showed the whole process of it being struck by lightning & most satisfactorily proved how completely his plan protects the vessel from any bad consequences. This plan"
"10, 1752, and later repeated several more times throughout Europe, though after a fatality in 1753 it was less frequently tried. Franklin declared that this ""sentry-box experiment"" showed that lightning and electricity were one and the same. Franklin realized that wooden buildings could be protected from lightning strikes, and the deadly fires that often resulted, by placing a pointed iron on a rooftop, with the other end of the rod placed deep into the ground. The sharp point of the lightning rod would attract the electrical discharge from the cloud, and the lightning bolt would hit the iron rod instead"
"1851 by Clairville and Éléonore Tenaille de Vaulabelle (under the pseudonym Jules Cordier), there is a scene presenting a version of the lightning hat (""chapeau paratonnerre"") as a ""Chinese invention"". Lightning rod fashion Lightning rod fashion was a fad in late eighteenth-century Europe after the lightning rod, invented by Benjamin Franklin, was introduced. Lightning rod hats for ladies and lightning umbrellas for gentlemen were most popular in France, especially in Paris. The concept that inspired the fashion was that a lightning bolt would strike the Franklin-designed protective device instead of the person, and then the electricity would travel down a"