50 SELLEKS — TRANSMISSION OF ENERGY BY ELECTRICITY. [Feb. 3, 



bership many men of distinction in electrical engineering in its 

 broadest sense. From some of these we may expect contributions. 



Inasmuch as the founder of this Society, Dr. Benjamin Franklin, 

 attracted attention as a scientist in the domain of natural philoso- 

 phy by and through his electrical experiments, I think it advisable 

 to call attention to the limited resources at his command, not only 

 when he announced his. belief that electricity and lightning were 

 one and the same thing, but even up to the date of his death. I do 

 so mainly to show the close interdependence between scientific re- 

 search and the practical application of knowledge to the use of 

 man, and further to show how much of the progress in exact 

 scientific knowledge has been gained from the practical work done 

 in experimental research by those who have not had the technical 

 training or the knowledge of the higher mathematics, whereby 

 they would have been able, to the extent of previously collected 

 data, to formulate conditions leading to results in advance of the 

 experimentation that alone can be depended on to prove the cor- 

 rectness of their deductions. I also desire to show how the grow- 

 ing wants of man have excited research, more particularly when 

 commercial demand calls for the practical application of knowledge 

 to any stated end. 



Dr. Franklin was an experimenter. His interest in electricity as 

 one of the then little understood but most interesting branches of 

 natural philosophy was brought about through his ability to generate 

 what he called '^ electric fire," and to exhibit the effects produced 

 thereby, in conducting the simple experiments possible with the 

 meagre apparatus at his command. It seems that he had received 

 from a friend in London a glass cylinder or rod, ^ with which simple 

 device, held in one hand and excited to produce electricity by 

 being rubbed with a silken cloth, or the fur side of a catskin, he 

 was able to charge Leyden jars or electric condensers, and thus ex- 

 hibit the more striking effects of static electricity. The electric 

 sparks from the outset may have impressed him as similar to the 

 lightning flash of "thunder-storms." 



In the order of chronological sequence, permit me to call atten- 

 tion to our records to connect this Society with his work. We 

 know that Dr. Franklin, on April 5, 1744, eight years before his 

 important electrical discovery, wrote to Mr. Golden explaining his 

 idea of a Society for the Promotion of Useful Knowledge, which 



^ This rod, in its tin case, is in the collection of the Society. 



