THE ELECTRIFIED VIAL AND THE QUESTIONS IT RAISED.
THERE came from Europe to America at this time some electrical tubes,
which being rubbed produced surprising results. To the curious they were
toys, but to Franklin they were prophecies. There were three
Philadelphians who joined with Franklin in the study of the effects that
could be produced by these tubes and the Leyden vial.
Franklin's son William was verging on manhood. He was beyond the years
that we find him experimenting with his father in the old pictures. He
became the last royal Governor of New Jersey some years afterward, and a
Tory, and his politics at that period was a sore grief to his father's
heart. But he was a bright, free-hearted boy now, nearly twenty, and his
father loved him, and the two were harmonious and were companions for
each other.
Franklin, we may suppose, interested the boy in the bristling tubes and
the magical bottle. The stored electricity in the latter was like the
imprisoned genii of the Arabian Nights. Let the fairy loose, he suddenly
mingled with native elements, and one could not gather him again. But
another could be gathered.
The Philadelphia philosophers wondered greatly at the new effects that
Franklin was able to produce from the tubes and the bottle. Did not the
genii in the vial hold the secret of the earth, and might not the earth
itself be a magnet, and might not magnetism fill interstellar space?
The wonder grew, and its suggestions. One of the Philadelphia
philosophers, Philip Sing, invented an electrical machine. A like
machine had been made in Europe, but of this Mr. Sing did not know.
The Philadelphia philosophers discovered the power of metallic points to
draw off electricity.
"Electricity is not created by friction," observed one of these men. "It
is only collected by it."
"And all our experiments show," argued Franklin, "that electricity is
positive and negative."
During the winter of 1746-'47 these men devoted as much of their time as
they could spare to electrical experiments.
"William," said one of the philosophers to the son of Franklin one day,
"you have brought your friends here to see the vial genii; he is a
lively imp. Let me show you some new things which I found he can do."
He brought out a bottle of spirits and poured the liquid into a plate.
"Stand up on the insulating stool, my boy, and let me electrify you, and
see if the imp loves liquor."
The lively lad obeyed. He pointed his finger down to the liquor in the
plate. It burst into flame, startling the audience.
"Now," said another of the philosophers, "let me ask you to give me a
magic torch."
He presented to his finger a candle with an alcoholic wick. The candle
was at once lighted, emitting sparks as it began to burn.
"Hoi, hoi!" said the philosopher to the young visitors, "what do you
think of a young man whose touch is fire? We have a Faust among us,
sure!"
"Now, girls, which of you would like to try an experiment?" we may
suppose Father Franklin to say, in the spirit of Poor Richard.
William stepped down, and an adventurous girl took his place on the
experimental stool.
"You have all heard of the electric kiss," said Poor Richard. "Let this
young lady give you one. I will prepare her for it."
He did.
Another girl stepped up to receive it. She expected to receive a spark
from her friend's lips; but instead of a spark she received a shock that
caused her to leap and to bend double, and to utter a piercing cry.
"I don't think that the kissing of young men and young women in public
is altogether in good taste," said the philosophers, "but if any of you
young men want to salute this lively young lady in that way, there will
be in this case no objections."
But none of the young men cared to be thrown into convulsions by the
innocent-looking lass, who seemed to feel no discomfort.
Experiments like these filled the city and province with amazement. The
philosopher made a spider of burned cork that would _run_, and cause
other people to run who had not learned the wherefore of the curious
experiment.
The wonderful Leyden vial became Franklin's companion. He liked ever to
be experimenting in what the new force would do. What next? what next?
How like lightning was this electricity! How could he increase
electrical force?
He says at the end of a long narrative:
"We made what we called an _electrical battery_, consisting of eleven
panes of large sash-glass, armed with thin leaden plates pasted on each
side, placed vertically, and supported at two inches distance on silk
cords, with thick hooks of leaden wire, one from each side, standing
upright, distant from each other, and convenient communications of wire
and chain, from the giving side of one pane to the receiving side of the
other, that so the whole might be charged together."
Franklin at this time was a stanch royalist. He made a figure of George
II, with a crown, and so arranged it that the powerful electrical force
might be stored in the _crown_.
"God bless him!" said the philosopher.
A young man seeing that the crown was very attractive, attempted to
remove it. It was a thing that the philosopher had expected.
The youth touched the crown. He reeled, and started back with a stroke
that filled him with amazement.
"So be it with all of King George's enemies!" said the philosophers.
"Never attempt to discrown the king."
"God bless him!" said Franklin. His son always continued to say this,
but Franklin himself came to see that he who discrowns kings may be
greater than kings, and that it became the duty of a people to discrown
tyrannical kings, and to make a king of the popular will.
Franklin now resolved to give up his business affairs to others, to
refuse political office, and to devote himself to science. The latter
resolution he did not keep. He went to live on a retired spot on the
Delaware, where he had a large garden, and could be left to his
experiments and thoughts upon them. With him went the magical bottle and
his interesting son William.
The power of metallic points to draw off lightning now filled his mind.
"Could the lightning be controlled?" he began to ask. "Could the power
of the thunderbolt be disarmed?"
Every element can be made to obey its own laws. Water will bear up iron
if the iron be hollow. But deeply and more deeply must the thoughts
engage the mind of the philosopher. "Is lightning electricity? Does
electricity fill all space?" He wrote two philosophical papers at this
critical period of his life, when he sought to give up money-making and
political life for the study of that science which would be most useful
to man. He who gives up gains. He who is willing to deny himself the
most shall have the most. He that loseth his life shall save it. He who
seeketh the good of others shall find it in himself.
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.