ricity originated with him: as he went along he had to invent words like condenser, conductor, charge, discharge, battery, electrician, electric shock, positive and negative electricity, and concepts of plus and minus charges. (Britannica vol.19 pg.532)Few of his contemporaries were equipped to perceive how different and advanced his approach was. Those who did understand his work thought it extraordinary. By the time he went abroad on his first diplomatic mission in 1757, scientists in England and Europe greeted him as the Newton of electricity. (Osborne pg.67)The first spark to ignite Bens interest in this field was struck on a visit to Boston in 1743. There he met Dr. Archibald Spencer from Scotland who was traveling around the colonies to display his bag of tricks in electrostatics. His most spectacular stunt was to suspend a small boy from the ceiling by silken threads while he drew sparks from the childs hands and feet. The audiences for these shows were both fascinated and frightened. Ben said that what he witnessed had surprised and pleased him as quite a new subject. (Meltzer pg.118)Part of the standard equipment of electrical experiments at that time was the Leyden jar. It was simply a stoppered bottle of water. Through the cork stopper a metal rod hung down into the liquid. Some experimenters coated the bottle with metal foil. When charged, the Leyden jar gave a strong shock to people touching it. In one experiment to enlighten the French court, when a shock was given to a line of 180 guardsmen, all holding hands, they jumped simultaneously into the air as though parading in the sky. The same experiment at a monastery threw 700 monks into a whirling convulsion. (Meltzer pg.119)Here is how a twentieth-century physicist, Mitchell Wilson, explains the significance of Franklins Leyden jar experiments:Franklin set himself the task of answering a question which no one else had thought of asking: exactly what was it in s...
