January 17,2006, will be the 300th anniversary of the birth of Franklin.
Kant once remarked that Benjamin Franklin was a new Prometheus who had stolen fire from heaven. In his own day, Franklin was celebrated
throughout all Europe as the world's foremost electrician and his book on the subject was in demand in many countries. Far-reaching in its influence, the book bccamc an important Text in the electrical field and even today wc still write of electricity in terms introduced in print by Franklin. Used in the electrical sense, probably for the first time, in the inventor's book were words such as armature, battery brush, chargcd, charging, condcnsc, conductor, discharge, electrical fire, electrical shock, electrician, electrified, electrify, Lcydcn bottle, minus, negative, non-conducting, non-conductor, non-clcctric, plus, positive, and others.
Franklin saw his first clcctrical demonstration in Boston in 1746. He purchased all the apparatus used by the British experimenter, Dr. Spcncc, and proceeded in electrical experiments of his own with great interest. The work that he did was soon far ahead of the European discoveries. With great enthusiasm, he described new discoveries that were to him unique, for he had no way of telling what work his predecessors had done. Foremost among the observations was the discovery of the action of points in drawing off and throwing off the clcctrical fire. One of Franklin's scientific achievements was his experiment with the Lcydcn jar. He explained the startling discovery that the electrified jar bccamc chargcd positively on the outside, negatively on the inside, and showed by means of experiment that the positive charge on the outer coating of the jar was exactly equal and opposite to the negative inner charge.
Besides the importance and usefulness of Franklin's discoveries, the world knows him well for his hypothesis conccrning the clcctrical nature of lightning. Up to his discoveries the general impression was that lightning was caused by flic explosion of poisonous gases in the air. In 1749, Franklin established that electrical fluid and lightning had similar properties of giving light, colour of the light, crookcd direction, swift motion, being conducted by metals, crack or noise in exploding, subsisting in water or icc, rending bodies it passes through, destroying animals, melting metals, firing inflammable substanccs, sulphureous smell.