June 10, 1752—In the kite experiment
with lightning that made him a transatlantic hero of Enlightenment science, Benjamin Franklin relied heavily on his
son, a young man increasingly favored by his father despite the stigma associated
with his illegitimate birth. Two decades
later, however, father and son received a shock worse than anything they
encountered in their experiment when they found themselves on opposite sides in
the colonies’ break with England.
No matter what your age, there’s a good
chance that your image of Franklin comes from a painting or illustration
showing him holding the kite aloft while William Franklin, a boy, watches in wonder. In fact, on that June afternoon in
Philadelphia, William was the only witness to the event.
But much of the rest of the visual
impression, like much of what we know about Benjamin Franklin, is enshrouded in
myth. (That wouldn’t have surprised his jealous Continental Congress colleague
John Adams, who, with time on his hands and frustration building as
Vice-President, vented, in his often hilariously grouchy vein, to his friend Benjamin Rush: “The
history of our Revolution will be one continued lie from one end to the other. The
essence of the whole will be that Dr. Franklin’s electrical rod smote the earth
and out sprang General Washington. That Franklin electrified him with his rod –
and thenceforward these two conducted all the policies, negotiations,
legislatures, and war.”)
For starters, William wasn’t a young boy
but a 22-year-old man who had already distinguished himself for bravery in the
colony’s militia. And he wasn’t a mere observer: According to biographer Willard Sterne
Randall, he had designed the kite himself, then run around in the pasture three
times holding the kite. (At 46, Ben was in little condition to carry out the
experiment himself; he was already putting on the weight that would, in old
age, leave him painfully gout-ridden.)
In fact, this was not his first
involvement with his father’s thinking about all of this. In the past several
years, as Benjamin segued from the printing business that had made him rich and
famous into an equally busy retirement as an inventor and politician, he had
assigned William the task of gathering in glass bottles electricity from
thunderstorms passing overhead.
William was there when his impatient
father didn’t want to wait around in the summer of 1752 for completion of the
steeple of Christ Church in order to conduct an experiment with lightning. A
kite flying high in a storm, he reasoned, would serve just as well.
Call William a mere lab assistant, if
you want, but that particular experiment wouldn’t have been done if he hadn’t
been willing to put himself in harm’s way so his father could observe how the
whole thing turned out from the safety of a shepherd’s shed.
None of this is to take away what Benjamin
accomplished, with what he considered his most important invention: a lightning rod that saved countless
colonial buildings and lives from the longtime hazard of fire. Making an impact on the
international scientific scene should have been daunting for someone so
advanced in age, lacking in formal education, and an ocean away from the Royal
Academy of Science. Yet Franklin proved more than equal to the task. His achievements
are memorialized in Philadelphia’s Franklin Institute Science Museum.
When I visited the museum several years ago, the cries
of delighted children reverberated throughout, in no small way because of a
dozen interactive exhibits. Many of the permanent exhibits revolve around
subjects that fascinated Franklin: meteorology, communications, even sports.
But the heart of the museum is the Franklin
National Memorial—America’s official tribute to the Founding Father.
James Earle Fraser’s 20-foot marble high statue of
Franklin dominates the museum’s rotunda. Surprisingly for such an epitome of
bourgeois ideals, Franklin here resembles a Greek or Roman god. But perhaps
it’s not entirely a fanciful notion: as the man who first fully explained
electricity, then invented a life-saving lightning rod,
Franklin was sometimes regarded as the American Prometheus, the tamer of
nature’s most mysterious and terrifying power.
In loving, and frequently surprising, detail, Memorial
Hall not only displays items associated with Franklin but delights in true
arcana about the man. Many of Franklin’s possessions have been collected here,
notably an odometer he used in establishing postal routes, a sword and scabbard
he wore at the court of France, his composing table, and many of his original
publications.
The focus, however, is on Franklin’s scientific
achievements. Everyone knows about Franklin’s experiments with lightning and
electricity, but he achieved many other scientific and technological “firsts”—
first American printer to make molten type; first to invent bifocals; first to
propose daylight savings time; even first to eat a French fry!
Puckishness, combined with an ever-questing curiosity,
produced Franklin’s triumphs. He loved to play
parlor tricks to show off recent discoveries. (Not that these demonstrations
couldn’t embarrass Franklin--once, in checking equipment, he accidentally
shocked himself, then begged the recipient of his letter not to disclose this
secret.)
The modern world continues to benefit from Franklin’s
innovations in ways he never conceived. His “long-reach arm,” for instance, allowed
him to reach books on top shelves in his study without stepping on a ladder. In
the twenty-first century, the “long-reach” cuts branches and pulls down
merchandise in grocery stores.
The least introspective of men, Franklin often showed
more interest in the natural world than in his own psyche. As soon as he saw a
problem, nothing could stop his relentless search for a practical solution.
While sailing back and forth from England in 1753, he wondered why there was a
difference in the general ocean current and that of the Caribbean. As a result,
he became the first to explain the existence of the Gulf Stream, leading to
voyages from England to America being shortened by several weeks. He developed
bifocals because he tired of carrying two pairs of glasses around all the time.
His swim fins and flotation vests originated in his love for swimming. His
stove used heat and fuel far more efficiently than those built up to that time.
In science as in
business, Franklin frequently attained the most by working through others
rather than by himself, however. One Memorial Hall exhibit highlights his
crucial role in publicizing the first organized American observation of the
Transit of Venus in 1753. He acted as influence and example to Philadelphia’s
other great colonial scientist, David Rittenhouse.
America’s first
internationally acclaimed scientist had high hopes of working most productively
through his own son. After the lightning experiment, William became an
important ally of Benjamin’s in promoting a plan for a united colonial effort
to defend against attacks in the French and Indian War, as well as in
transferring control of Pennsylvania from the descendants of William Penn to
the crown. Benjamin watched with pride as his son apprenticed himself to a prominent
Pennsylvania lawyer, then won appointment as royal governor of New Jersey,
where he impressed many with his administrative ability.
Then, when
Benjamin fell out with the crown over his conduct as London agent for the
colonies, he was shocked to find that William had become a Loyalist. William,
seized by the patriots and thrown into prison for a few years, suffered so
badly in body and mind (his wife died while he was incarcerated) that even
George Washington was moved to write on his behalf. But Benjamin refused to
intervene, the Continental Congress dropped any notion of intervention, and William continued to languish in prison.
A couple of
years after the war ended, father and son met for one last time in London, but the
atmosphere resembled a tense business meeting more than a family reunion. A once-close partnership that produced
one of the world’s great advances in science and safety was irretrievably
shattered.
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