One of these papers was entitled "Opinions and Conjectures concerning the Properties and Effects of the Electrical Matter, and the Means of preserving Ships and Buildings from Lightning, arising from Experiments and Observations at Philadelphia in 1749."
In this treatise, which at last made his fame, he shows the similarity of electricity to lightning, and gives a description of an experiment in which a little lightning-rod had drawn away electricity from an artificial storm cloud. He says:
"If these things are so, may not the knowledge of this power of points be of use to mankind in preserving houses, churches, ships, etc., from the stroke of lightning, by directing us to fix on the highest part of those edifices upright rods of iron made sharp as a needle, and gilt to prevent rusting, and from the foot of those rods a wire down the outside of the building into the ground, or down round one of the shrouds of a ship, and down her side till it reaches the water? Would not these pointed rods probably draw the electrical fire silently out of a cloud before it came nigh enough to strike, and thereby secure us from that most sudden and terrible mischief?"
A great discovery was at hand.
CHAPTER XXVII.
THE GREAT DISCOVERY.
It was a June day, 1752—one of the longest days of the year. Benjamin Franklin was then forty-six years of age.
The house garden was full of bloom; the trees were in leafage, and there was the music of blooms in the hives of the bees.