ment" had been successful in France in May of that year, M. Dalibard drawing electricity from a thunder cloud by a pointed rod. When the tidings of this reached America, Franklin had not publicly announced his success with the silken kite, and it was not until 19 October following in a letter to Peter Collinson he wrote, as frequent mention is made in public papers from Europe, of the success of the Philadelphia experiment for drawing the electric fire from clouds by means of pointed rods of iron erected on high buildings, &c., it may be agreeable to the curious to be informed, that the same experiment has succeeded in Philadelphia, though made in a different and more easy manner;
and he then proceeds to a description of his June experiment, though in an entirely impersonal manner.[1] This letter was read at the Royal Society on 31 December following, and in the following November he was granted by the Society the Copley Medal for that year "on account of his curious experiments and observations on electricity, as a mark of distinction due to his unquestionable merit;" and on 29 April, 1756, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.
The Rev. Ebenezer Kinnersley, alike interested in these studies, gave public exhibitions of many of these experiments, and quite reasonably at the time was granted to him by the public the meed of praise as their discoverer; but Franklin's correspondence, now all brought to light, shows their letters, and the relative claims of the two to distinction in the premises can be properly measured. Franklin took the scientific into his confidence rather than the curious public. But traces of Franklin's observations can be found from time to time in the news columns (so-called) of the Pennsylvania Gazette, where frequent record is made of instances of the destructive power of lightning which had been reported to him, doubtless in answer to his request, published in the Gazette of 21 June, 1753, namely:
Those of our Readers in this and the neighboring Provinces, who
- ↑ Bigelow, ii. 262. On Franklin's Lightning Rod vide Dr. Andrew D. White's History of the Warfare of Science and Theology, i. 365, for an interesting statement of the early opposition it engendered, and of its practical usefulness winning its way among its theological opponents.
