Who has to try? She's cute as all get out.
Posted on 01/28/2002 4:47:08 PM PST by Exigence
Ben Franklin: Scientist or Magician?
by Alison Freisinger
Electricity was, for the most part, a useless parlor diversion in Benjamin Franklin's time. Men called "electricians" performed like magicians. Dr. Archibald Spencer, for example, would suspend a boy from the ceiling and coax static electric sparks from the child's limbs. Franklin, however, was one of the first people to realize that so-called "electrical fluid" might have practical uses.
Experiments, which ran from roasting a turkey with electricity to designing bells that heralded the presence of lightning (and irritated his wife to no end), helped Franklin define attributes of electricity. He recognized it as a potential source of energy, and was the first person to use terms like condenser, conductor, charge, battery, and electric shock. Franklin discovered the lightning rod, though some of his contemporaries refused to use it. They feared that it might cause earthquakes by drawing the violent power of electricity into the ground, and some believed that to avoid lightning was to deny the punishment or warnings of God.
Electricity was not Franklin's only scientific interest. He invented the Franklin stove, bifocals, plaster, a clothes-pressing machine, and an odometer. His studies of the world around him led to discoveries in meteorology, engineering, and other practical fields, eventually prompting Robert Millikan, who won the 1923 Nobel Prize for physics, to rank Franklin fifth among great scientists--after Copernicus, Galileo, Newton, and Huygens. In a truly democratic gesture, Franklin refused to patent any of his inventions, believing they should be available to all.
A serious scientist, Franklin was not above using science to perform a little "magic" now and then. At an English estate in 1772, Franklin boasted that he could quiet the river. Walking to the water's edge, he made sweeping passes over the river with his bamboo cane, and the waters ran smooth. His astonished viewers didn't know his cane was filled with oil, which had coated the water.
No one can defend his or herself against someone else's unfounded accusations and wild imaginings.
Move on, Faith. You're out of line and off topic.
Who has to try? She's cute as all get out.
Spreading oil on the water is hardly "evil." When you toss that word around so carelessly you devalue it. Much in the same way when you accuse someone you don't even know of murder. Then, for some reason, you can't understand why no one reacts to your diatribes. You do more harm to your own "cause" than anyone else possibly could.
Try reading the fable about the boy who called "wolf." You might find it applicable -- or you won't. But, nutty websites about murders are hardly applicable to Ben Franklin's explorations into electricity and parlor tricks with oil and water. It was that kind of thinking that led to the Salem Witch trials where innocent people *were* murdered by those who could only see evil -- even where there was only innocence. I had hoped we'd learned from history. But, I guess not all of us have.
I'm wearing one now. And nothing else.
They may have seemed queer at the time, but in retrospect they were actually quite stodgy. Well, Ben was a naturist, but that's a whole different story...
Queer:
Pronunciation: 'kwir Function: adjective
Etymology: origin unknown
Date: 1508
a : differing in some odd way from what is usual or normal
Yep - they were queer. Thank Galt.
He found out how to do that trick by watching what happened to the sea when the ships cook threw oily water into it. He was on his way to merry 'ol England to convince the King and his ilk to let PA people vote about their own taxes :-)
In front of women and children, no less.
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