BULLETIN 220] [MARCH, 1914. 



Ontario Department of Agriculture 



ONTARIO AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE 



Lightning Rods 



W. H. Day 



"Lightning Eods ! Are They ant Good f 



Hundreds of times during the past tliirteen years this question has been put 

 to the instructors of the Department of Physics. Hundreds of times we have 

 answered '' Certainly," only to be immediately confronted with the logical sequent 

 " How do you know ?" Until a year ago our chief reason was " Because science says 

 so/' but to the farmer that reason has seldom carried conviction, not because he 

 doubted our word particularly, but because he is accustomed to dealing with indi- 

 vidual concrete examples, and he has sometime or other known or heard of a 

 " rodded " building having been burned, and with him this one example carried 

 more weight than the teachings of science, no matter how imperfectly the rodding 

 may have been done. 



To-dav. however, we are no longer denendent upon science alone for our an- 

 swer, to-day we know from experience that lightning rods, properly installed, 

 are almost absolute protection. Out of every thousand dollars worth of damage 

 done to unrodded buildings by lightning nine hundred and ninety-nine dollars 

 worth would be saved if those buildings were properly rodded ! A pretty strong 

 statement, you say. We realize that it is strong. It has taken thirteen years of 

 investigation to compile the data upon which that statement is founded. 



Away back in 1901, when Prof. J. B. Eeynolds was head of the Department of 

 English and Physics, he began to investigate the efficiency of lightning rods. Five 

 years later, when two departments were formed of one and he chose the Depart- 

 ment of English, leaving the writer tlie Department of Physics, the writer thought 

 he could not do better than continne the work so ably begun. To-day after eight 

 years' further study added to the five we have the problem solved. 



Lightning Rods Save Bcjildings if Steuck. 



The first question we asked ourselves was this: "If a rodded building is struck, 

 is it as likely to be burned as an unrodded one which is struck?" Reports were 

 received from a number of selected observers in the various counties, also from 

 Insurance companies, but a still greater number were clipped from the daily and 

 weekly papers, and in all cases where the owner's address was learned he was 

 written to for a personal report. In the ten years from 1901 to 1910 reports 

 were received covering 599 buildings that were struck by lightning. Of these 



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