256 EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. PT. m 



buildings so that the electricity might run down from the 

 clouds into the earth without doing any harm. But this 

 notion seemed so absurd, even to clever men, that they 

 could not help laughing when his papers were read, and did 

 not even think them worth printing. You will easily un- 

 derstand that after this Franklin was ashamed to speak of 

 an experiment he meant to make by which he hoped to 

 bring down electricity from the sky. So we find that he 

 told no one but his son, whom he took with him upon this 

 strange expedition. 



Franklin's idea was that if he could send an iron rod up 

 into the clouds to meet the lightning, it would become 

 charged with the electricity, which he believed was there, 

 and would send it down a thread attached to it, so that he 

 might be able to feel it. He took, therefore, two light strips 

 of cedar fastened crossvvays, upon which he stretched a silk 

 handkerchief tied by the corners to the end of the cross, and 

 to the top of this kite he fixed a sharp-pointed iron wire 

 more than a foot long. He then put a tail and a string to 

 his kite, and at the end of the string near his hand he tied 

 some silk (which is a bad conductor), to prevent the elec- 

 tricity from escaping into his body. Between the string 

 and the silk he tied a key, in which the electricity might 

 be collected. 



When his kite was ready he waited eagerly for a heavy 

 thunderstorm, and, as soon as it came, he went out with 

 his son to the commons near Philadelphia and let his kite 

 fly. It mounted up among the dark clouds, but at first no 

 electricity came down, for the string was too dry to conduct 

 it. But by and by the heavy rain fell, the kite and string 

 both became thoroughly wet, and the fibres of the string 

 stood out as threads do when electricity passes along them. 

 Directly Franklin saw this he knew that his experiment had 



