Benjamin Franklin'S Invention

Ben Franklin’s invention-Lightning Rod

Benjamin Franklin was born in 1706 in Boston, he was known as a founding father of the United States and he adopted the ideas of the Renaissance and Enlightenment. Also, He was a member of the Second Continental Congress, he drafted and signed the Declaration of Independence and U.S. Constitution, during the American Revolutionary War he was the commissioner to France .

Franklin also created many unique inventions, he did not invent electricity, but he discovered many things about it. The lightning rod is one of them .

Before 18th century, lots of people were killed and building were destroyed by lightning. To save lives and buildings from lightning, Franklin try to find a good way to solve the lightning strike. However, on May 10, 1752, Thomas-Francois Dalibard, a French naturalist, used a 40-foot-tall iron rod extracted electrical sparks from a cloud. Thomas-Francois Dalibard’s experiment conducted Franklin a lot.

In 1752, Philadelphia, there was a lightning storm, Franklin attached a metal key to the kite, then he tied the kite string to an insulating silk ribbon for the knuckles, and hold it with his hand, it was very dangerous, when the key received an electrical charge from the air, Franklin knew that lightning was a form of electricity.             

After couple mouths, Franklin put up his first lightning rods, it is just a rod attached to the top of the building, connected to the ground with a wire. So the electric charge from lightning strikes the rod and the charge is conducted harmlessly into the ground. This protects houses from burning down and people from electrocution. In Stealing God’s Thunder: Benjamin Franklin’s Lightning Rod and the Invention of America, Joseph Dray said: “The lightning rod was one of the Enlightenment’s greatest inventions not only for the lives and property it saved, but for its potent symbolism.” From there, Joseph Dray used the word symbolism, because the lightning rod could spread idea of Enlightenment.