HISTORY OF ELECTRICITY IN AMERICA. 



BY QEORQE HERBERT STOCKBRIDGE. 



[George Herbert Stockbridgo, electrical engineer, born Jnly 2, 1S63, at Cincinnati, 

 O.; educated at Ohio state university and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; 

 entered upon the practice of his profession as electrical engineer, to which he has 

 devoted most of his business life, though occasionally writing articles for technical 

 and general periodicals.] 



It happens that the first great name in electrical science 

 in America is one of the first and greatest in electrical science 

 evers^where. Benjamin Franklin began to devote himself 

 to electrical studies at a time when scarcely more than half a 

 dozen investigators had contributed anything of perma- 

 nent value to the science; while his h^^pothesis of a single 

 electrical fluid subsisting in positive and negative states 

 marks a turning point toward the modern science, and his 

 demonstration of the identity of lightning and electricity 

 outranks in popular and scientific interest every experiment 

 before or after, prior to the discovery of current electricity 

 by Volta and Galvani, fifty years later. Priestly says of 

 his theoretical work: ^^Dr. Franklin's principles bid fair 

 to be handed down to posterity as equally expressive of 

 the true principles of electricity, with the Newtonian phil- 

 osophy of the true system of nature in general." Beyond such 

 praise as this it is impossible to go; but Dubourg justifies it 

 when he says that the doctrine of Franklin taught us to 

 discriminate and to foresee. The course of scientific prog- 

 ress from the beginning until now has been lighted from 

 point to point by a few golden lamps answering to that simple 

 touchstone of Dubourg's. No wonder Priesth^ thought of com- 

 paring Franklin to Newton, as an Italian might have likened 

 him to Galileo, or a German to Kepler and Copernicus. 



The circumstance that Franklin's work was done in 

 the early and elementary days of electrical knowledge adds 

 to the audacity of his famous experiment with the kite; 

 which quality was, indeed, from the first, one of the chief 

 reasons for the great popularity of that particular piece 



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