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Benjamin Franklin's legendary kite experiment of 1752 seeking to investigate lightning's electrical essence has passed into scientific lore as a pivotal early demonstration of flying an apparatus to draw power from the sky.
While much mythologized over time, the ingenious Philadelphia test Franklin devised with his son makes him an early pioneer in experimentally proving electricity's connection to storms and lightning.
Previously in 1752, the French scientist Thomas-François Dalibard had conducted a critical experiment at Marly-la-Ville, showing that pointed metal rods erected towards thunderclouds could collect electrical charges.
Dalibard's work built on Franklin's proposals about drawing lightning using such rods and gathering the charge in primitive capacitors or "leyden jars."
Tragically demonstrating the dangers, Dalibard's experiment was soon replicated by the professor Georg Wilhelm Richmann, who was killed by a lightning strike during the attempt, in Saint Petersburg the next year.
Benjamin Franklin's iconic 1752 kite experiment that investigated the electrical nature of lightning was predated by his own speculative writings on the subject.
In 1750, Franklin had already theorized that high points, like mountains and ship masts, attracted an "electrical fire" from charged thunderclouds as they passed overhead.
Thus when Franklin flew a kite to draw lightning two years later, he was building on his own previous postulation about the affinity between electricity and elevation during storms.
In 1752, the inquisitive American scientist Benjamin Franklin devised an imaginative test to probe the underlying nature of the fearsome phenomenon of lightning.
Seeking to confirm a connection between lightning and the novel electrical fluid being studied by researchers of his day, Franklin proposed an experiment flying a kite rigged with a conductor into a storm cloud.
This world-famous kite experiment, conducted in June 1752 in Philadelphia, was the first attempt by Franklin to elicit lightning's electrical properties using a practical demonstration.
When Franklin flew his legendary kite in 1752, he ingeniously outfitted it with a pointed wire to draw electricity from charged storm clouds rather than endanger himself with a metal conductor.
Guided by prudence, he allowed a hemp twine string, made conductive by soaking, to channel the captured electrical essence down to a Leyden jar on the ground.
By keeping the kite string wet but his body dry, Franklin demonstrated empirical wisdom in safely collecting electricity from the heavens during his famed thunderstorm experiment.
When Benjamin Franklin flew his storied kite in 1752, its hemp string transmitted gathered electrical charge down to a "Leyden jar," an early form of capacitor.
As Franklin moved his hand near this primitive device connected to the kite twine, an arcing spark was observed to jump from the jar.
This striking electrical discharge provided Franklin the dramatic proof needed to confirm his long-held belief that the awe-inspiring phenomenon of lightning was kindred in nature to the enigmatic force produced in scientific experiments with static electricity.
When Benjamin Franklin conducted his famed thunderstorm kite test in 1752, he wisely chose to stay grounded while his son operated the kite, preventing lethal harm.
Rather than endanger his elderly self aloft, Franklin instructed his son to fly the lightning-drawing kite from the shelter of a nearby shed, keeping father and son dry.
This shrewd precaution likely saved Franklin's life during the iconic electrical experiment that confirmed his theory about lightning's electrical essence.
Wasting no time publicizing his pivotal findings, Benjamin Franklin detailed his electrical kite experiment in the pages of his own Philadelphia newspaper just months after performing it in 1752.
Though Franklin's brief account in the Pennsylvania Gazette omitted admitting his personal involvement with the dangerous kite test, this early printed description spread word of the experiment that first demonstrated lightning's electrical nature.
It would be years before fellow scientist Joseph Priestley revealed that Franklin himself had orchestrated the famous stormy-sky demonstration that combined a kite, key, and jar to channel electricity out of the clouds.
Though enshrined in legend, some modern analysis suggests Franklin's kite was never directly struck by lightning, as that would have almost certainly proved fatal.
Rather, the accumulated atmospheric charge Franklin drew down the wet kite string simply electrified the Leyden jar to produce spark.
Thus what made this 1752 experiment truly historic was Franklin managing to capture electricity from the clouds, not withstand a direct lightning strike's formidable power.
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