A Day When Ben Franklin's Key Unlocked Electricity, 1752
You Are There: A Graphic History Series
You Are There… The Graphic History Guide.
Historical Backdrop
In June of 1752, Benjamin Franklin is forty-six years old, already one of the most famous men in British North America — a printer, civic organizer, inventor, and self-taught natural philosopher whose electrical experiments have been published in London and discussed across Europe. For several years, he has been arguing that lightning is nothing more than a massive electrical discharge, identical in nature to the sparks produced by Leyden jars in parlor demonstrations. In 1750 he proposed an experiment using a pointed iron rod atop a tall steeple to “draw off” electrical fire from thunderclouds, but Philadelphia’s Christ Church steeple remains unfinished, leaving him without a tall enough structure. So Franklin devises an alternative: a silk kite fitted with a pointed wire, flown into a thunderstorm, with a metal key fastened to the line and a dry silk ribbon insulating his hand. His illegitimate son William, twenty-one years old and serving as his father’s loyal assistant, will help him. The experiment, conducted in secrecy to avoid ridicule if it fails, will take place in an open field on the outskirts of Philadelphia, near a small shed whose doorway will keep the crucial silk ribbon dry. If it works, Franklin will have proven that the terrifying power in the sky is the same force that makes hair stand on end in a gentleman’s study — and that it can be controlled.
June 10, 1752 — 5:14 AM — Franklin Residence, Market Street, Philadelphia, Colony of Pennsylvania
You wake up in colonial Philadelphia, and the humid air already carries the scent of a coming storm. You open your eyes in the gray half-light, the linen sheet damp against your skin from the June humidity that has settled over Philadelphia like a second blanket. The room smells of tallow, old ink, and the faint sourness of a chamber pot beneath the bed. Through the single window with its imperfect glass panes, you can see the sky is overcast, heavy and low, a ceiling of pewter that promises weather. You swing your legs over the side of the rope-strung bed, your stockinged feet finding the wide pine floorboards, still cool. Your mind is already running — you have been watching the sky for days, waiting for the right kind of storm, the towering thunderheads that roll in from the west. Today feels different. Today the barometric pressure has dropped, and you can sense it in the ache behind your temples and the stillness of the air outside. You reach for the small round spectacles on the bedside table and slide them onto your nose, and the room sharpens into focus.
June 10, 1752 — 6:40 AM — Kitchen, Franklin Residence, Market Street, Philadelphia
You sit at the heavy oak table in the kitchen, where Deborah has set out bread, cold ham, and small beer in a pewter tankard. Your wife moves with her usual brisk efficiency, her face flushed from the heat of the hearth even this early, her graying brown hair pulled back tight under a plain linen cap. She does not ask about your plans for the day — she has learned not to, having lived through years of your experiments, the singed curtains, the shattered glass jars, the time you knocked yourself unconscious trying to electrocute a turkey. You eat steadily, tearing the bread with your ink-stained fingers, chewing the dense crumb that tastes faintly of rye and ash. Through the open kitchen door you can hear Market Street waking — the clatter of a cart on cobblestones, a rooster somewhere too close, the calls of vendors already setting up near the market sheds. The air coming through the door is warm and thick, carrying the smell of horse dung and the faint brackish odor of the Delaware River six blocks east. William appears in the doorway, tall and lean, his dark brown hair already tied back neatly. He meets your eyes and you give a small nod. He understands. Today might be the day.
June 10, 1752 — 8:15 AM — Franklin’s Study, Second Floor, Market Street, Philadelphia
You climb the narrow stairs to your study, where the tools of your electrical investigations are spread across a broad worktable like the instruments of some arcane faith. Two Leyden jars — glass bottles coated inside and out with metal foil — sit among coils of wire, a brass chain, cork balls dangling from silk thread, and scattered pages covered in your own cramped handwriting. The room smells of paper, linseed oil, and the faintly metallic tang of brass. You pick up the iron key you have selected — a large door key, heavy in the palm, its surface slightly pitted with age — and turn it over, feeling its weight. This is the instrument that will either confirm your theory or make you a fool. You set it down and reach for the silk handkerchief you obtained last week, running it between your fingers, testing its weave. Silk does not conduct the electrical fire — you have proven this in dozens of experiments. It will insulate your hand from the charge traveling down the hempen string. You check the pointed wire, perhaps eight inches long, that you will fix to the top of the kite’s crosspiece. You have written to Peter Collinson in London that you believe pointed conductors draw off electrical charge more efficiently than blunt ones. Today you will test this idea against the full fury of the sky.
June 10, 1752 — 10:30 AM — Market Street, Philadelphia
