No one in those days knew the nature of thunder and
lightning, and the old explanation that they were the voice of an
angry God was for many a sufficient explanation. Franklin, by a
long series of experiments in the free Quaker colony, finally
proved in 1752 that lightning was electricity, that is to say, a
manifestation of the same force that is produced when glass is
rubbed with buckskin. He invented the lightning rod, discovered
the phenomenon of positive and negative electricity, explained
the action of the Leyden jar, and was the first American writer
on the modern science of political economy. This energetic
citizen of Pennsylvania spent a large part of his life in
research; he studied the Gulf Stream, storms and their causes,
waterspouts, whirlwinds; and he established the fact that the
northeast storms of the Atlantic coast usually move against the
wind.
But Franklin was not the only scientist in the colony. Besides
his three friends, Kinnersley, Hopkinson, and Syng, who worked
with him and helped him in his discoveries, there were David
Rittenhouse, the astronomer, John Bartram, the botanist, and a
host of others.
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