PROGRESS TOWARDS AN EXPLA- 

 NATION OF ELECTRICITY 



PROBABLY the world had begun to wonder vague- 

 ly what was this new thing called electricity long 

 before Benjamin Franklin's famous experiments. 

 But it was when Franklin showed that the lightning 

 drawn from the clpuds, and the sparks one gets 

 from rubbing a cat's fur briskly, are one and the 

 same, that interest became acute. 



Franklin was not merely the first of the great 

 electricians, but a thinker as well. It is surprising 

 to follow all his ingenious researches and realize 

 how far he actually got. It was he, for example, 

 who was the first electrocutionist though his vic- 

 tims were hens rather than murderers and it was 

 he who first employed electricity for cooking. 



Over the true nature of the thing whose prop- 

 erties he did so much to unravel, Franklin pon- 

 dered long and hard. When, said he, I take a 

 glass rod and rub it with a piece of flannel, I find 

 that it will attract or repel certain substances 



