Kite experiment

Abstract: The first fatal electrical injury reported in scientific literature was in France in 1879 (JexBlake, 1913). A stage carpenter was killed at Lyon by the alternating current of a Siemens dynamo giving a voltage of about 250 volts at the time. The first electrocution death in UK was in 1880, close to Birmingham (Jex-Blake, 1913). Samuel W. Smith was the first person in the United States to die after electrocution by a generator in Buffalo, New York, in 1881 (Daley, 2010). Since those first cases the annual number of electrical injuries and deaths from electric shock have steadily increased as a result of the widespread use of electricity and the application of electrically powered machinery. Although electricity is a relatively recent invention, humans have always been exposed to the devastating electrical power of lightning and understandably attributed it to supernatural powers (Koumbourlis, 2002). Beginning around 700BC the ancient Greeks depicted lightning as a tool of warning of their god of thunder Zeus (O’Keefe Gatewood, 2004). In Roman mythology Jupiter used thunderbolts as a tool of vengeance and condemnation, thus those stuck by lighting were denied burial rituals. For the Vikings, lightning was produced by the hammer of Thor the Thunderer as he rode through the heavens. In the East, early statues of Buddha show him carrying a thunderbolt with arrows at each end. In Chinese mythology the goddess of lightning, Tien Mu, used mirrors to direct bolts of lightning. African tribes, the Native American Navajo culture and many others also have specific beliefs about lightning. Benjamin Franklin is generally regarded as the father of electrical science, the person who proved that lightning is an electric phenomenon and that thunderclouds are electrically charged with his famous kite experiment (O’Keefe Gatewood, 2004). He constructed a kite and flew it during a storm. When the string became wet enough to conduct, Franklin, who stood under a shed and held the string by a dry silk cord, put his hand near a metal key attached to the string, causing a spark to jump. Today it is known that lightning is a phenomenon not restricted to the Earth planet only. It is observed in the atmosphere of Jupiter (Little, 1999), and in this sense lightning presents danger to flying craft and their crew as well (Uman, 2003).

Abstract: SYNOPSIS Franklin's kite experiment as described b y him in the well-known letter to Collinson, dated October 19, 1752, naturally challenged the attention of the scientific world and established the electrical nature of lightning. Efforts to get accurate dates and details have proved unavailing thus far, although it would seem that in contemporaneous journals and correspondence some corroborative evidence must exist. The common belief that the kite experiment paved the way for the introduction of the lightning rod is disproved by Franklin's own use of the rod and his clearly expressed views as to the identity of lightning and electricity, at earlier dates. Perhaps the most promising method of obtaining knowledge of the nature of lightning is the duplication by artificial means of high voltage discharges having considerable current and very steep wave fronts. Such work is now carried on by the General Electric Co. in its high tension laboratory at Pittsfield, Mass., under the direction of Mr. F. W. Peek, j...

Abstract: DOES THE LIGHTNING ROD HAVE A HISTORY? A modern encyclopedia suggests that Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning rod in 1752, and it has been in use ever since, protecting human beings and their property from heavenly destruction.1 End of story. Indeed, the lightning rod's construction seems so simple and its function so obvious that even a child can understand it. What more could possibly be said? If the story were really so pat, this book might end here. However, the matter is far from being so simple. In our own research on eighteenth century electricians and research on electricity, we each encountered these odd-looking metal constructions time and again. For one thing, Benjamin Franklin's invention of the lightning rod is one of the classic, emblematic stories of the Enlightenment. The most famous episode is Franklin's kite experiment, which showed both artificial and natural electricity to be electrical and which was related in these stories to the invention of the lightning rod. The demonstration of lightning as an electrical phenomenon was hailed as a momentous breakthrough in science, credited by some with the breakdown of an old system of religious beliefs and heralded by others with the very invention of America. The second best-known episode is probably the Purfleet controversy in which the proper design of the tip of the lightning rod was hotly debated in Britain in the 1770s. This was epitomized by the anecdote in which the president of the Royal Society (in favor of points) told King George III (in favor of knobs) that it was not in his power to alter the laws of nature.2 And the third cause celebre is the trial of St. Omer in Northern France in the early 1780s concerning the right of Charles Dominique de Vissery to install a rod on his roof. This spectacular trial was followed throughout France (and beyond) and provided the first public stage for a young lawyer named Maximilien de Robespierre. The future revolutionary scolded the people of St. Omer for their backwardness and their failure to embrace enlightened values.3 On one level, then, the lightning rod has played a historical, if stereotypical role as the stuff of hreakthroughs, founding moments, and anecdotes that celebrate the triumph of reason and science over superstition and dogma. In our own research, lightning rods have played less exalted but perhaps more interesting parts in the story of Charles Augustin Coulomb's classic investigations that led to the formulation of the inverse square law of electrical charge (Heering) and in the humbler story of itinerant lecturers struggling to scratch a living from public demonstrations of electrical marvels and the installation of lightning rods ( Hochadel ).4 These talcs were less about triumph and more about conflict, both epistemologica! and economic. Our stories dealt with the contested use of new instruments and questions of authority: Who was to decide the proper design of a lightning rod? Could these quarrels simply signify" the difficult birth of a new technology that, once established, stirred little interest or controversy after 1800? Or could there be more? Our curiosity was aroused and made us probe deeper, well beyond our initial topics. Surveying the publications in our field, we quickly learned that research on lightning and the lightning rod remained controversial throughout the nineteenth century. For example, the august Academie des Sciences in Paris devoted several committees to the subject, arguing for decades about design issues.' Beginning in the 1820s the British electrician William Snow Harris promoted his new lightning protection system for warships. In his numerous publications he tried to alert the Royal Navy to the fact that several warships and many men had been lost due to insufficient lightning rods.6 In the late nineteenth century the British physicist Oliver Lodge tried to re-create lightning in the laboratory to improve the construction of lightning rods. …