HISTORY OF ELECTRICITY IN AMERICA in 



he has already become wholly given up to the study of elec- 

 trical phenomena. He says : 



'Tor my own part, I never was before engaged in any 

 studies that so totally engrossed my attention and time, 

 for what with making experiments when I can be alone, and 

 repeating them to my friends and acquaintances, who, from 

 the novelty of the thing, come continually in crowds to see 

 them, I have, during some months past, had little leisure 

 for anything else." 



From this time on for several years, his letters to Collin- 

 son are filled with wonderfully clear details of numberless 

 experiments coupled with brilliant deductions and specu- 

 lations of a scientific nature. Here, in this offhand, private 

 correspondence, Franklin sets forth the doctrine which was 

 to change permanently the course of electrical science, and 

 describes the most remarkable electrical experiment that 

 was ever tried. 



Through Collinson, accounts of Franklin's work were 

 laid from time to time before the Royal Society, where, 

 however, they excited little favorable attention, and in some 

 instances derision. Franklin's suggestion of the possibility 

 of rendering lightning discharges harmless by conducting 

 them through an easy medium to the earth was the subject 

 of special hilarity on the part of Collinson's learned associates. 

 Collinson himself seems to have held his friend's labors in 

 high esteem. At all events, through him Franklin's letters 

 were published in London, though without the authoritative 

 inscript of the Royal Society. In this form, or, rather, in 

 the form of a bad French translation, they came under the 

 eye of the celebrated French naturalist and philosopher, 

 Buffon, who at once saw their value, and advised that an 

 accurate translation be made. And the reputation which 

 Franldin thus, and by his later scientific work, acquired in 

 France contributed not a little to his influence in after years 

 when he appeared at the court of Louis the Sixteenth in the 

 role of a diplomat. 



It was in this roundabout way that the French savants 

 learned of Franklin's determination to test the identity of 

 electricity and lightning by actual trial: for, closely follow- 



