542 THE INTELLECTUAL RISE IN ELECTRICITY 



but if the extremity be blunt, then the light is not seen 

 unless it be brought very near to the globe. 



The circumstances surrounding this attack upon the 

 problems of electricity were novel. In Europe men had 

 become skillful electricians, apparatus had been brought 

 to a condition of refinement, and the keenest philosophical 

 minds had seemingly exhausted their powers in proposing 

 explanatory theories. Every investigator of electricity 

 worked under the potent influence of this highly-developed 

 environment. 



On the other hand, in the colonies there was virtually 

 no environment at all in any wise corresponding in charac- 

 ter. The knowledge of past achievement possessed by 

 Franklin and his colleagues was probably all drawn from 

 Watson's pamphlets, Collinson's brief letters and Spence's 

 crude experiments. And this was perhaps fortunate, for 

 had they been better posted, they would probably have 

 deemed impracticable, in the beginning, efforts which 

 ultimately ended in success. They seem to have copied 

 nothing from European sources not even the electrical 

 machine, which they re-invented. The tubes which Frank- 

 lin caused to be made at the glass house were of common 

 green glass, thirty inches long and as large as could be 

 grasped in the hand. Rubbing them with buckskin, as 

 he says, was fatiguing exercise; and it was for greater con- 

 venience that Philip Sing made the glass into a globe, and 

 taking the hint from his grindstone, gave it an axle and 

 crank. 



Not being aware of the multitude of earlier theories, and 

 unable to reconcile Watson's hypothesis with the showing 

 of experiment, it was inevitable that the Philadelphia ex- 

 perimenters should seek for themselves some other explan- 

 ation of the strange and novel effects before them. Thus 

 came into existence, at the very outset of their research, 

 the Franklinian theory, and it is first announced in the 

 same letter to Collinson in which is described the u draw- 

 ing off" action of the pointed rod. It gained a wider ac- 



