The Philadelphian experiments, that Mr. Collinson, a member of
the Royal Society, was so kind as to communicate to the public,
having been universally admired in France, the king desired to see
them performed. Wherefore the Duke D'Ayen offered his majesty his
country-house at St. Germain, where M. de Lor, master of experimental
philosophy, should put those of Philadelphia in execution. His
majesty saw them with great satisfaction, and greatly applauded
Messieurs Franklin and Collinson. These applauses of his majesty
having excited in Messieurs de Buffon, D'Alibard, and de Lor, a
desire of verifying the conjectures of Mr. Franklin, upon the
analogy of thunder and electricity, they prepared themselves for
making the experiment.
M. D'Alibard chose for this purpose, a garden situated at Marly,
where he placed upon an electrical body a pointed bar of iron, of
forty feet high. On the 10th of May, twenty minutes past two in
the afternoon, a stormy cloud having passed over the place where
the bar stood, those that were appointed to observe it, drew near,
and attracted from it sparks of fire, perceiving the same kind of
commotions as in the common electrical experiments.
M. de Lor, sensible of the good success of this experiment, resolved
to repeat it at his house in the Estrapade, at Paris. He raised a
bar of iron ninety-nine feet high, placed upon a cake of resin, two
feet square, and three inches thick. On the 18th of May, between four
and five in the afternoon, a stormy cloud having passed over the
bar, where it remained half an hour, he drew sparks from the bar,
like those from the gun barrel, when, in the electrical experiments,
the globe is only rubbed by the cushion, and they produced the same
noise, the same fire, and the same crackling. They drew the strongest
sparks at the distance of nine lines, while the rain, mingled with
a little hail, fell from the cloud, without either thunder or
lightning; this cloud being, according to all appearance, only the
consequence of a storm, which happened elsewhere.