Benjamin Franklin was born in the year 1706, in the city of Boston Mass. Ben was a great scientist, inventor and politician. With all of this going on Ben somehow also found time to be a father to his illegitimate son William, who he brought everywhere with him. The world today owes a lot to Benjamin Franklin. Science was one of Benjamins many interests. He was the one who first linked lightning and electricity.
He did this in 1752 by flying a kite in a thunderstorm. The kite was being flown with a key attached to it and when the lightning hit the key the electricity traveled down the metal wire attached to it and shocked him. The kite experiment was not his only experiment though, he also performed several others to determine certain aspects of how electricity works. One of these involved static electricity. In this experiment he rubbed a piece of carpet on something metal and then proceeded to touch a metal spike. He was shocked by the spike. Being shocked proved that electricity cold be made by friction.
This experiment also paved the way to the invention of the generator. While Ben was studying electricity he came up with a couple of very useful inventions, which, we still use today. One of these inventions was a lightning rod. Ben used the lightning rod in some of his early experiments linking lightning to electricity. The rod was simply mounted on a rooftop (or someplace else that was fairly high) with a wire coming from it connected to some electric buzzers. When the lightning would hit the rod the buzzers would ring. Ben also found a practical use for these rods he found that when mounted on houses lightning would be attracted directly to the rods and away from the house itself.
The Essay on Electricity Notes
A lightning rod is a metal pole with a wire attached to it that runs from a high point in the building and down to the ground. They are used to prevent damage to buildings. Grounding static charges can help prevent sparks near flammable fuels. Paint sprayers work better if the object and the paint have different charges. Photocopiers use electrostatic principles in their operation. Grounding wires ...
After this discovery he started to sell the rods and mount them on rooftops. We still use rods similar to the ones he invented today. Another interest of Bens was politics. This you could probably say was his real profession. He was an ambassador for the U.S. in France. He was also sent to other places including England to fight for certain issues.
In 1775, Ben returned to the U.S. to help write and eventually sign the Declaration of Independence. During the revolution that followed the Declaration, Ben was one of the men who negotiated for peace in England. Benjamin Franklin died on April 17th, 1790. He was a great man whom without we would almost surely be lost. He helped bring peace between two warring nations (U.S. and England).
He also gave us some very useful inventions which we still use today, not to mention the fact that he proved lightning was related to electricity. Benjamin Franklins was really a great man who the world today really owes a