Kite experiment

Speculations of Jean-Antoine Nollet had led to the issue of the electrical nature of lightning being posed as a prize question at Bordeaux in 1749.

[1] The physicist Jacques de Romas also wrote a mémoire with similar ideas that year and later defended them as independent of Franklin's.

[2] In 1752, Franklin proposed an experiment with conductive rods to attract lightning to a leyden jar, an early form of capacitor.

[3] An attempt to replicate the experiment killed Georg Wilhelm Richmann in Saint Petersburg in August 1753; he was thought to be the victim of ball lightning.

[10][11][12] However, Franklin noticed that loose threads of the kite string were repelling one another and deduced that the Leyden jar was being charged.

Benjamin Franklin Drawing Electricity from the Sky , an artistic rendition of Franklin's kite experiment painted by Benjamin West , c. 1816
The BEP engraved the vignette Franklin and Electricity ( c. 1860 ) which was used on the $10 National Bank Note from the 1860s to 1890s.