292 THE COMING OF MAN 



that makes the amber act as it does when rubbed. 

 We call that power electricity, from the name the 

 Greeks gave to amber; but, although we know how 

 to produce it, how to store it and how to make it 

 work for us, we do not know even yet what elec- 

 tricity really is. 



Now, while people were trying to learn more 

 about this extraordinary power to which they gave 

 the name electricity, there was a man living in 

 America who made an important discovery. His 

 quick eyes told him that the jagged flash of light, 

 which leaped through the air from one to another of 

 those surfaces that had been charged with elec- 

 tricity, was just like a flash of lightning. He de- 

 termined to find out if it could be true that the 

 lightning, one of the greatest mysteries of nature, 

 could be caused by the same power that made the 

 tiny flash or spark in the electrical instrimients nien 

 had been making. 



So this man, Benjamin Franklin, went out of 

 doors when a thunderstorm was coming on, taking 

 a silk kite that he had made and pointed with wire, 

 a silk ribbon which he tied to the cord of the kite, 

 and a key to hang upon the ribbon. With these he 

 hoped to coax the lightning out of the sky and bottle 

 it up in a Leyden jar. 



You must have heard the stoiy, and know that 

 he succeeded in proving to the world that the mys- 

 terious lightning was electricity, not an unknown 

 thing to be feared and dreaded, but a force of nature 

 that, like everything else, had laws of its own to 

 follow. 



