06/11/2026
When the movement for American independence began, the men who led it were unknown outside the colonies. With one exception. Benjamin Franklin was seventy years old when he signed the Declaration of Independence and by then he was already world famous.
A self-made man, Franklin had earned a fortune as a printer/publisher. His international reputation was secured by his work as a scientist and inventor.
Dr. Franklin, as he was usually called, was admitted to London’s Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce (now the Royal Society of the Arts) in 1756. By the time the American Revolution began, he was regarded as one of the world’s leading scientists and intellectuals.
Franklin invented bifocals, lightning rods, and the Franklin stove. As a scientist, he is probably best remembered for his famous kite experiment.
Franklin believed thunderstorms generated electricity. To prove his hypothesis, Franklin attached to a string of h**p twine to a kite. At the end of the string, he attached a house key and a Leyden jar, which collected and stored electricity. Then he tied a silk cord to the end of the h**p string and affixed a piece of wire to the kite, to act as a lightning rod.
On a stormy day, he and his son William stood under a shed in a field outside Philadelphia and launched the kite. Franklin believed the wire on the kite would attract electricity from the storm, then conduct it down the wet h**p string. He made sure the silk cord at the end stayed dry, so that it would act as an insulator. As the scientist Joseph Priestly wrote, “Dr. Franklin, astonishing as it must have appeared, contrived actually to bring lightning from the heavens, by means of an electrical kite, which he raised when a storm of thunder was perceived to be coming on.”
With the kite dancing amid the thunderclouds, Franklin noticed the loose threads on the h**p string were standing erect. He moved his hand near the key got the shocking result he had hoped for. Franklin’s Leyden jar, in Priestly’s words ““collected electric fire very copiously.”
Franklin’s experimentation led to his invention of lightning rods and in 1753 the Royal Society awarded him the prestigious Copley Award, honoring him for his “curious experiments and observations on electricity.”
Franklin’s fame and reputation as a scientist and intellectual contributed greatly to his credibility and prestige in Europe, which in turn contributed to the success of his efforts on behalf of the United States while serving an American minister to France, where he was instrumental in negotiating the treaty of alliance with France that was crucial to the success of the American cause.
Benjamin Franklin conducted his famous kite experiment on June 10, 1752, two hundred seventy-four years ago today.
Of course, the experiment was very dangerous. Do not try it yourselves.
