- Yes, Benjamin Franklin did fly a kite in a storm,
but no, he was never struck by lightning,
and he did not discover electricity.
In fact, he wasn't even the first person
to prove the lightning was electric.
That was done a month before Franklin's kite experiment
by a Frenchman to humiliate a rival.
Wait, how can electrical experiment humiliate anyone?
And how did it work without getting struck by lightning?
And why is Franklin's kite experiment famous,
instead of Dalibart's tent experiment in France?
Well, I'll tell you, and along the way,
I'll talk about the invention of the lightning rod,
death by lightning strike,
and how an experiment in France helped America
win the American revolution.
Ready? Let's go.
♪ Electricity, electricity ♪
This story begins with a long-standing rivalry
in France between John Antoin "Abbe" Nollet
and a man named, ready for it?
Georges-Louis Leclarc, the Compte de Buffon.
Abbe Nollet was an old school religious scientist.
Abbe is French for friar,
who is famous for his shocking experiments.
And for introducing the Leyden ja to France,
he was deeply offended by the philosophies
of the enlightenment,
especially it's push for religious freedom
and its acceptance of atheism.
Buffon was a leader of the French enlightenment,
along with his friends, Voltaire and Deidre.
He was a naturalist studying plants and animals who wrote a
36 books series on natural history that was read by every
educated person in Europe.
As expected, Nollet and his religious friends
did not like Buffon's books,
saying they were revolting and that they encouraged atheism,
materialism, hedonism, and bad science.
This leads us to Benjamin Franklin.
Franklin had decided to publish his letters to friend about
electricity as a book.
In the book,
Franklin proposed this radical idea
that we still believe today,
that everything contains charges.
And when you rub things, you're not creating electricity,
you're only moving the charges,
which he called positive charges and negative charges.
This was contrary to the prevailing theory made
by Nollet's former mentor.
That when you rubbed the glass object,
you created glass-like electricity,
and when you rubbed a wax-like object,
you created wax like electricity.
Therefore, Franklin wisely decided that Nollet
would not be very receptive to his new ideas.
So instead of sending his book to Nollet,
France's leading expert in electricity,
he instead sent his book to Buffon.
Buffon was delighted to get the book.
Now he had no interest in electricity,
but he was very invested in humiliating Nollet.
Therefore, he asked his friend Thomas Dalibart
to translate Franklin's book into French,
even though Dalibart was also a naturalist and had no
knowledge of electricity either and hired an electricity
performer to demonstrate Franklin's experiments to the king.
Nollet as expected was furious.
Quote, "Mr. Buffon is the promoter of the whole business.
He does not appear openly himself because he knows too
little about the subject.
He hires tradesmen in his service
who take care of everything."
Nollet even wondered if Franklin was a real
person or might've just been invented whole cloth
by his enemies to attack him.
The king was highly impressed with the Philadelphia
experiments and Dalibart and Buffon wondered
if Franklin's had has any other tricks that could perform.
Therefore, they decided to attempt
Franklin's lightning experiment.
See, in the book Franklin had written that he thought
lightning was the same as the sparks he got
in his laboratory.
He came up with a terrifying experiment that he called
the Sentry Box or the Guard House Experiment to prove
that lightening clouds were electrified.
You put a large metal pole with a kink in it
in a house on the insulating stand.
When a storm cloud passes nearby,
the charges in the pole will move by induction,
or moving charges at a distance.
And one could get sparks from the kink in the pole.
Franklin was planning on trying this experiment by putting
a pole in a church steeple,
but construction on the church was going slowly,
so he hadn't yet attempted it.
Therefore Dalibart put a large metal pole
on an insulating stand,
sticking out of a tent near his country house in the town of
Marly-la-Ville around 15 miles from Paris.
At 2:00 PM on Wednesday, May 10th, 1752
a storm passed through.
Now Dalibart was unfortunately in Paris,
but he retained the services of a retired soldier who
managed to get a couple of good sparks from the pole.
Even the local priests joined in the fun
and got some good sparks too.
Dalibart wrote to the Paris Academy "That lightning
is incontestably the same as that of electricity.
The idea which Mr. Franklin
had of this ceases to be conjecture, it is now a reality."
Nollet objected to the experiment, said it needed to be done
by qualified electricians.
He therefore challenged every physicist in Europe
to recreate the experiment.
"Up to and including poor Mr. Nollet,
dying of chagrin of it all,"
as Mr. Buffon gallantly put it.
As their main purpose was to humiliate Nollet,
not to understand electricity.
Every time they succeeded an experiment,
they remarked on the brilliance
of Mr. Franklin and his Philadelphia experiment.
Soon, Franklin became the toast of Paris.
Therefore, when Franklin went to France to try to get money
and arms for the American revolution,
he arrived as a superstar.
After such an unprecedented success in humiliation,
Buffon went back to his natural history studies,
never to discuss electricity again.
Dalibart too gave up on electricity after giving himself
too many shocks.
Although he often wrote Franklin,
they became good friends and he helped Franklin gain arms
for the American revolution.
Meanwhile, Franklin wrote that he heard of the success
of the Philadelphia Experiment in Europe,
and then he had had similar success in a different
and more easy manner with a kite.
Here's the famous Franklin Kite Experiment.
Franklin made a silk kite with a sharp wire sticking
of the top of it.
He then used a line of wire and twine
that was tied to metal key.
Finally, he had a bit of silk rope
between his hand and the key.
Even though the kite was flown in the rain,
the person and the silk rope
and the key were under a doorway or porch and kept dry so
that no electricity would flow to the person
holding the kite.
Notice that just like the previous experiment,
this experiment works without the kite
being struck by lightning.
The idea is if the clouds are electrified,
then the wire and key will be electrified too.
Franklin found that sparks stream out plentifully
from the key on approach of your knuckle
and the sameness of electrical
matter with that of lightning is completely demonstrated.
Many people erroneously thought that Franklin's kite
was hit by lightning instead of flying on a stormy day
without getting hit.
Thinking that the kite was hit by lightning
has caused many, many, many people to mistakenly
think the Franklin didn't do the experiment at all.
If it was a fake, it was an odd one.
Franklin never denied that he did his experiment
after the French one.
He also had no history of lying about science or not taking
it seriously or honestly,
and he had no idea that the kite experiment would hit such
a nerve in popular culture.
Just because it's possible to fly a kite in the storm,
doesn't mean it isn't dangerous.
In fact, the following year, a man in St. Petersburg
was playing with a Sentry Box Experiment
when it was struck by lightning and he was killed.
So Benjamin Franklin was very lucky
to have survived his experiment.
The fact that you could get sparks from an iron rod due
to a distance thundercloud gave many people,
including Benjamin Franklin,
the mistaken impression that they were actually draining
the electricity from the lightning cloud.
Therefore, they thought if they just took the rod and put it
straight into the ground,
they could prevent lightning strikes from happening
in the first place.
They also correctly figured out that if the lightning strike
did hit the metal bar,
the electricity would safely flow into the ground without
"causing mischief", as Franklin would put it.
Thus, the lightening rod was born.
Surprisingly, a simple piece of metal sticking out
of buildings and connected to the ground
is still used to protect us from
lightning strikes to this very day.
In the mid-1700's however, it terrified and offended people.
And that strange story is next time
on "The Secret History of Electricity".
♪ Electricity, electricity ♪
Thanks for watching my video.
Please remember to give it the thumbs up.
If you want to know about how Ben Franklin discovered about
electricity and figured out the positive and negative
charges, please check out my previous video,
"How Benjamin Franklin Discovered Electricity".
Also, check out my next one about the lightning rod.
It's gonna be a good one.
You should also subscribe to my YouTube channel
called "Kathy Loves Physics"
or join my Facebook page also called "Kathy Loves Physics",
or maybe join both.
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Thanks and have a good day.
(funky upbeat music)