WBRZ - Baton Rouge

Previous columns have noted Ben Franklin's expertise as an inventor, including his experiments with lightning and related electrical experiments. Franklin was inspired by other inventors and scientists' especially French academic, Thomas Dalibard, who actually performed the first lightning experiment. Franklin wanted to duplicate Dalibard's attempts and did so from Philadelphia's Christ Church on October 19, 1752. According to notes from his diary, Franklin made a cross of two light sticks, reaching the four corners of a handkerchief. Attached to the top of the stick was a sharp pointed wire, to the end of the twine, silk ribbon and a key. The exact location of Franklin's later tries places it possibly in mid-June in a now vacant lot near the intersection of Eighteenth and Spring streets in Philadelphia