ELECTRICITY. 



123 



rope ; and in these letters, not only the object of the experiment and the prin- 

 ciple it was designed to establish were fully explained, but minute and circum- 

 stantial directions were given as to the manner of executing it. Persons en- 

 gaged in physical inquiries in different parts of Europe were invited, and pre- 

 pared to submit it to a trial when convenient opportunities offered. Among 

 these was a French electrician, M. Dalibard, who, in the spring of 1752, pre- 

 pared means of making the experiment, at Marly-la- Ville, a place situate about six 

 leagues from Paris. He succeeded on the 10th of May, about a month before 

 th<5 experiment of Franklin, and made a report of his proceedings to the Acad- 

 emy of Sciences at Paris on the 13th, in which he states that the experiment 

 had been made at the suggestion and according to the method laid down by 

 Franklin.* The experiment of Franklin, in Juno, was made before he could 

 have been informed of that of Dalibard. The same experiment was repeated 

 on the 18th of May by M. de Lor. at his house in the Estrapade, at Paris ; and 

 an account of it, as well as that of M. Dalibard, was communicated to the 

 Royal Society of London by the Abbe Mazeas, in a letter dated 20th May, two 

 days after the latter experiment, in which the abbe ascribes all the credit of 

 the experiment to Franklin. f 



The right of Franklin to the credit of having established the identity of light- 

 ning and electricity has been denied, and the honor claimed for the French 

 philosophers Nollet and Dalibard. This claim was advanced, not when Eu- 

 rope from east to west, and from north to south, was filled with amazement 

 and admiration at the philosophic boldness of the " Philadelphian experiment" 

 (as it was universally called), or the profound sagacity with which it was con- 

 ceived, with which its minute details were prescribed, and its results foretold 

 not when its illustrious author was elected by acclamation a member of the 

 learned societies of Europe, and received the academical degree from the most 

 ancient and honored of universities but after the lapse of nearly a century, after 

 the story of Franklin's kite had passed from the transactions of philosophical so- 

 cieties, and the memoirs of institutes of sciences, into the primers of children. 

 In short, it was so recently as the year 1831, that, in his admirable Eloge of 

 Volta, M. Arago, taking a retrospect of electrical discovery, maintained that 

 after the conjecture of Nollet, on the identity of lightning and electricity, an 

 experiment to ascertain the fact was almost useless. And the reasons he as- 

 signed for such inutility were, that the experiment had been first made when 

 flame appeared on the spears of soldiers, and the masts of ships ;J but that, if 

 any credit be claimed for the actual exhibition of the fact by immediate experi- 

 ment, that credit is due to M. Dalibard. 



if such a statement, supported by such a reason, had proceeded from a quar- 

 ter less entitled to respect than the " perpetual secretary of the Academy of 



* " En suivant la route que M. Franklin nous a tracee, j'ai obtenu one satisfaction complete." 

 Memoir de M. Dalibard, quoted in Franklin's works, vol. v., p. 288. 



t See Phil. Trans., vol. xvii. 1752. 



t " Les premieres vues de Franklin sur 1'analogie de I'electricite et dn tonnerre n'etaient, comme 

 ls idees anterieures de Nollet que de simples conjectures. Toute la difference, entre les deux phy- 

 Biciens, se reduisait alors a un projet d'experience, dont Nollet n'avait pas parler Sans por- 

 ter attaint a la gloire de Franklin, je dois remarquer que I'experisnce proposee etait prcsque inutile. 

 Les soldats de la cinquieme legion Romaine 1'avaient deja faite pendant la guerre d'Atrique. le jour 

 ou, comme Cesar le rapporte, le fer de tous les javelots parut en feu a la suite d'un orage. 11 en e*i 

 de m&me des nombreux navigateurs a qui Castor et Pollux s'fitaient montres, soil aux pointes me- 



talliques des mats ou des vergues, soil sur d'autres parties saillantes de leurs navires Au 



reste, soil que plusieurs de ces circonstances fusseut ignorees, soil qu'on ne les trouvat pas demon- 

 stratives, des essais directs semblereut necessaires, et c'est a Dalibard, notre compatriote, que la sci- 

 ence en a eteredevable. Le 10 Mai, 1752, pendant un orage, la grande tige de metal pointue qu'il 

 avail etablie dans un jardin de Marly-la- Ville donuait de petites etincelles, comme le fait le conduc- 

 teur de la machine feiectrique ordinaire, quand on en approche un fil de fer. Franklin ne realisa 

 eotte meme expferience aux Etats-Unis, a 1'aide d'un cerf volant, qu'un mois plus tard." Eloge de 

 Volta, p. 12. 



