Benjamin Franklin as Much Scientist as Statesman

Benjamin Franklin, forty-­six years old in June 1752, strode into a field just north of the burgeoning village of Philadelphia. He had told no one other than his twenty-­two-­year-­old son about his plan to demonstrate the connection between lightning and elec­tricity, both of which were then considered mysterious and terrifying. The Franklins carried only a ball of twine, a metal key, and a kite.

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Benjamin wasn’t the first to observe that both forces emit light, move swiftly in crooked directions, and discharge a sulfuric smell. He did, however, devise the first replicable experiment that proved their connection. About two years before, he had written detailed plans for placing an iron pole, about forty feet long, atop a tall building or church steeple. Reprinted in European journals, his proposal theorized that a brass-­pointed tip would draw electrical discharges from clouds and send them via wire into glass jars that stored the energy. Although Franklin felt the bodily risks from a lightning strike were small, he recommended experimenters shield themselves within a sentry box like that of a guard’s booth.

At the request of the French king, Thomas-­François Dalibard, on May 10, 1752, conducted Franklin’s experiment by raising such a pole above a church bell tower in Marly-­la-­Ville, about twenty-­five miles north of Paris. Adding to Franklin’s precautions, Dalibard and his assistants avoided electrocution by standing on insulated pads placed atop four empty wine bottles—­they were, after all, in France. He described their findings three days later at the French Académie des sciences, declaring, “M. Franklin’s idea has ceased to be conjecture; here it has become a reality.”  Within about a month, other scientists in France, England, and Germany all performed the sentry-­box experiment as Franklin had designed it.

Because of slow communications between Europe and the American colonies—­ships took about six weeks (though weather conditions could stretch that to two or three months) to sail the almost four thousand miles across the Atlantic—­Franklin hadn’t learned of these successful demonstrations before he decided to experiment in a “different and more easy manner.”  A kite tipped with a foot-­long wire solved the problem that Philadelphia then did not possess buildings tall enough to support an iron rod rising into the clouds; a common kite, he theorized, “could have a readier and better access to the regions of thunder than by any spire whatever.”

The notion of flying a wire-­tipped kite in an afternoon thunderstorm had to seem a little crazy in an era when lightning regularly ignited buildings. Franklin, moreover, feared “the ridicule which too commonly attends unsuccessful attempts in science.” Still, he ventured into a field in the rain simply out of curiosity about the nature of electric charges.

He avoided the common paper kite, making his of silk since that material “is fitter to bear the wet and wind of a thunder gust without tearing.” He crafted “a small cross of two light strips of cedar, the arms so long as to reach to the four corners of a large thin silk handkerchief when extended.” After adding a tail and loop, he fixed a foot-­long pointed wire to the top of the upright stick. For the string from the kite to the ground, he chose hemp twine that when wet would “conduct the electric fire freely.” He added some protection from shocks by inserting an insulated ribbon between the end of the twine and a sealing-­wax handle that he held. Between the twine and ribbon, Benjamin fastened a metal house key that he felt would collect charges captured from the clouds.

As the sky darkened ominously, Franklin and his son stood just inside a shed’s door and raised their kite…with no effect. Benjamin began “to despair of his contrivance,” yet as the clouds blackened further, despite the absence of lightning, the string’s filaments began to stand erect. As the line became wet from the emerging drizzle, Benjamin noted that electric sparks “stream(ed) out plentifully from the key at the approach of a person’s finger.”  Franklin’s experiment worked.

Although schoolchildren learn a little about this effective test, historians tend to dismiss Franklin’s science, focusing instead on his diplomacy and writings. Benjamin Franklin (1706–­1790) is mostly heralded for being the only patriot to sign the four key documents that created the United States, including the Declaration and Constitution. He negotiated the financial and military support from France that allowed the united colonies to win independence, and he settled the peace terms with Britain. Moreover, his witty insights and self-­help advice—­such as “Early to bed…”—­still permeate popular culture.

Yet with all due respect to Franklin’s standing as a founding father of our country, we wouldn’t be discussing his political prowess were it not for his fame as a leading scientist, which opened doors for him in the worlds of diplomacy and nation-building. Science, rather than being a sideline, is the through line that integrates Franklin’s diverse interests.

Benjamin’s work extended well beyond a simple-­sounding kite experiment to include leading-­edge research on electricity, heat, ocean currents, weather patterns, and chemical bonds. Building on the work of Francis Bacon, he also outlined a clear and straightforward process for careful observation, induction, measurement-­based testing, and fact-­focused conclusions. This empirical procedure, which would be called the scientific method, democratized the obtaining of knowledge, making natural philosophy, as science was then called, available to more than an educated and well-­heeled elite.

Science even drove Franklin’s patriotism. His American Philosophical Society was one of the earliest efforts to enable the autonomous American colonies to work together, and he regularly promoted New World researchers, boasting that their intellectual prowess matched that within the Old World’s staid, and often arrogant, universities. His commitment to reason, moreover, helped frame the founders’ approach to laws and politics.

Although Franklin was among the eighteenth century’s most famous scientists, too many historians have written off his explorations as a hobby rather than an underlying passion, treating them as an aside or relegating them to a single chapter. One of the most cited biographies asserts that “human life, civic duties, and morality were all more important to him than philosophical amusements.” An encyclopedia maintains that “Franklin never thought science was as important as public service,”  and as recently as 2002, a distinguished historian elides Franklin’s accomplishments, writing that his “scientific discoveries would count for little beside public service.” In fact, observation and experimentation not only pervade Franklin’s life, but he preferred talking science with his “philosophic friends” to discussing politics with “all the grandees of the earth.”

A few scholars feature Franklin’s practical inventions, such as pointed rods and efficient stoves that divert lightning and smoke from homes, yet they tend to portray him as a mere tinkerer. One popular profile claims Benjamin showed “little appreciation for abstract theories” and was anything but “a profound conceptualizer.” A rare countervailing argument came from Bernard Cohen, who asserted in the 1940s that Benjamin “made a fundamental and vital contribution to the general structure of electrical theory,” and he hinted that “the scientific-­empirical temper of (Benjamin’s) thought could be discerned in his social and political programs.” Yet even Cohen downplayed Benjamin’s examinations of refrigeration, the movement of ocean currents, the behavior of ants, how our blood circulates, and so much more.

Also routinely ignored are Franklin’s demographic studies, which influenced Adam Smith and Thomas Malthus, and even Charles Darwin on his way toward a theory of natural selection. Few biographers, moreover, view his science-­based associations as democracy-­building or his policy pamphlets as political science.

Experimenting with a child’s toy suggests to some that Franklin was more playful than philosophical. It is offered as evidence that his findings should have been obvious, that he was a genial codger and not an insightful contributor to our knowledge about the world. Yet before Franklin no one had designed repeatable experiments revealing the nature of electricity. Almost two centuries after Benjamin flew his kite, the poet Robert Frost paid tribute to his ingenuity by asking, “How many times it thundered before Franklin took the hint!”

Benjamin, admittedly, is a hard man to know. No doubt he left behind an extensive paper trail, penning a best-­selling memoir and Poor Richard’s Almanack, along with a multitude of articles that he wrote for his Pennsylvania Gazette. Yet these documents often display a detachment—­from objectivity to downright ventriloquism. Benjamin regularly adopted aliases or spoke in the voice of some mouthpiece he conjured. In fact, he was an inventor who reinvented himself several times over, moving from a teenage runaway and struggling tradesman to a well-­to-­do publisher, clever diplomat, and admired scientist.

When Franklin’s kite experiment is portrayed in popular culture, the enduring images often are fanciful, mischaracterize his contributions to science, and provoke misconceptions that surround Benjamin today. Perhaps the best-­known representation came from Currier and Ives more than a century after the event in a hand-­colored lithograph that depicts an old man comforting his frightened young son and holding a kite string in an open field as jagged flashes cross the sky. Yet as noted before, Franklin was vibrant; his son was a mature twenty-­two-­year-­old; these careful scientists sheltered in a shed to avoid electric bolts; and no lightning ever appeared that afternoon, simply clouds holding electrostatic energy.

A Benjamin West painting of 1816 advances a more grandiose view of this moment in science: a purple-­robed Franklin, surrounded by cherubs, reaches skyward to receive sparkling fire from the gods. Such renditions create crude caricatures that undermine our understanding of this complex individual. They also present competing, but inaccurate, legends—­a foolish fanatic practically begging to be electrocuted versus a godlike creature capturing power from the heavens. Rather than illuminate Franklin’s thought processes or the science itself, the images offer a simplistic spectrum of scientist portrayals, from daydreamer to demigod, complete with scraggly hair.

Our modern narratives also don’t give Franklin his due. A 2022 Ken Burns documentary focused on his diplomacy and ownership of slaves, virtually ignoring his science. A Broadway musical from 1964 embellished tales of his Paris romances, prompting a journalist to label him “our founding flirt.” The crass commercialization of his image in advertisements for investment funds and foods threatens to render him an eccentric and comic character who elicits neither controversy nor adulation.

Benjamin deserves to be rescued from such trivializing images. I assert that we do not appreciate Franklin as well as we believe or as richly as he deserves. We need to recognize how experimentation and reason pervaded his entire life, as well as acknowledge that his scientific discoveries surpassed pragmatic inventions.

What if scientists—­rather than historians or artists—­crafted his biography? Noting his insights into energy, molecules, climate, and refrigeration, Joseph Priestley, who isolated oxygen in 1774, declared Franklin’s discoveries to be “the greatest, perhaps, that [have] been made in the whole compass of philosophy since the time of Sir Isaac Newton.” English physicist J. J. Thomson, the man credited with detecting the electron in 1897, said that what Franklin “rendered to the science of electricity…can hardly be overestimated.” Robert ­Millikan, who won the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1923, labeled ­Franklin’s research “probably the most fundamental thing ever done in the field of electricity.”

Yet Benjamin was more than a respected experimenter. He became a science celebrity, in part because he strategically networked with others who could spread his ideas. His early success as a newspaperman also ensured his theories and tests were communicated clearly and engagingly.

Assessed through the lens of science, we find a more complete portrait of what John Adams called “one of the most curious characters in history.” That expression of fascination alone, particularly from a Franklin critic, prompts us to examine anew this man. Yet in an indirect way, Adams also accentuated Benjamin’s core and consistent attribute: curiosity.

The ingenious Franklin faced the world with wonderment and systematic study—­offering rich perspectives on the Enlightenment and the American experiment. His commitments to reason, experimentation, and tolerance also reveal his relevance to our modern era, when science, facts, and democracy face rising challenges.

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From Ingenious: A Biography of Benjamin Franklin, Scientist by Richard Munson. Copyright © 2024. Available from W.W. Norton & Company.