Jacques de Romas

His colleague François de Vivens (1697–1780) of Clairac proposed to call the device a brontomètre (from Greek βρέμω: thunder).

The same decade, Romas conducted the kite experiment that Benjamin Franklin proposed in 1750 in a letter to Peter Collinson, but that had not yet reached France.

For this reason, he performed later experiments only with separately grounded conductors and kites that he handled via glass rods.

On 12 July 1752, he wrote a letter to the académie of Bordeaux with a first report about his experiences with a grounded rod during a lightning storm.

In 1911, a 300 kg bronze statue in his honor was erected in Nérac, inaugurated by French president Armand Fallières.