PROTECTION AGAINST LIGHTNING. 681 



was not received without considerable opposition. A sharp shock of 

 an earthquake having been experienced in Massachusetts in 1755, this 

 was forthwith attributed to the evil influences of Franklin's lightning- 

 rods. A Boston clergyman preached against them in 1770 as " impious 

 contrivances to prevent the execution of the wrath of Heaven." Even 

 as late as 1826, an engineer in the employment of the British Govern- 

 ment recommended that all lightning-rods should be removed from 

 public buildings as dangerous expedients, and in 1838 the Governor- 

 General and Council of the East India Company ordered that all 

 lightning-rods should be removed from public buildings, arsenals, and 

 powder-magazines throughout India, and only became reconciled to 

 their restoration after a large magazine and corning-house, not fur- 

 nished with a conductor, had been blown up during a storm. 



Franklin was so much in earnest in reference to his invention that 

 he sent a friend at his own charge through the principal towns of the 

 New England Colonies to make known the powers and virtues of the 

 lightning-rod. In the " Poor Richard " for 1758, a kind of almanac 

 or manual which he was at that time publishing, he gave specific in- 

 structions for the erection of his rods. The second conductor which 

 he himself constructed was placed upon the house of Mr. West, a 

 wealthy merchant of Philadelphia. A few months after this had been 

 erected a storm burst over the town, and a flash of lightning was seen 

 to strike the point of the conductor, and to spread itself out as a sheet 

 of flame at its base. It was afterward found that about two inches 

 and a half of the brass point had been dissipated into the air, and that 

 immediately beneath the metal was melted into the form of an irreg- 

 ular blunt cap. The house, nevertheless, was quite uninjured. The 

 sheet of flame seen at the base of the conductor Franklin correctly 

 ascribed to the ground having been very dry, and to there not having 

 been a sufficiently capacious earth contact under those circumstances. 

 He nevertheless shrewdly, and quite justifiably, assumed that in this 

 case Nature had itself pronounced an unmistakable verdict in favor of 

 his invention. 



The controversy concerning the efficacy of lightning-rods continued 

 to agitate the councils of scientific men, notwithstanding this mem- 

 orable demonstration of their efficiency ; but, upon the whole, the new 

 doctrines made their way into the confidence of the intelligent classes 

 of the community. The most important circumstance in connection 

 with the early fortunes of the invention, perhaps, was the admirable 

 series of reports and instructions which were issued by the French 

 Government between the years 1823 and 1867, and to which Mr. An- 

 derson now once again, and not superfluously, draws public attention 

 in his recent pamphlet entitled " Information about Lightning-Con- 

 ductors issued by the Academy of Sciences of France." The first of 

 these reports was drawn up in 1823 by Gay-Lussac, the discoverer of the 

 law of the expansibility of gases, the companion of Humboldt, and the 



