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Re: B.Franklin



I DID NOT KNOW THIS.

According to New York Times Magazine (Sunday, 12/22/1996, page 17)
Franklin

nearly killed himself in 1750 (2 years before the kite experiment). He
was

trying "to electrocute his holiday turkey as a parlor trick" ...
claiming

that the meat becomes "uncommonly tender". He used two metal wires
inserted

into Leyden jars. "Absent-mindendly touching the wires to the chain
that

connected the jars, Frankiln himself became a conductor. Witnesses
reported

a loud flash and crack. Franklin passed out; his body convulsed
briefly

before he came to, left with an aching chest and a swollen spot where
the

charge apparently entered his head. It was, he wrote later, an
experiment

'I desire never to repeat' ".

ludwik kowalski


Ludwick:

We use the text of Franklin's letter describing this event as a handout
in our classes. I believe my colleague Willy Smith got it from Bob
Morse's workshop materials on electrostatics.


Neat letter! Here it is...


Dear Friend,<fontfamily><param>Times</param>


</fontfamily>I have lately made an experiment that I desire never to
repeat. Two nights ago, being about to kill a turkey by the shock from
two large glass jars, containing as much electrical fire as forty
common phials, I inadvertently took the whole through my own arms and
body, by receiving the fire from the united top wires with one hand
while the other held a chain connected with the outside of both jars.
The company present (whose talking to me and to one another, I suppose,
occasioned my inattention to what I was about) say that the flash was
very great, and the crack as loud as a pistol, yet, my senses being
instantly gone, I neither saw the one nor heard the other; nor did I
feel the stroke in my hand, though afterwards found it raised a round
swelling where the fire entered, as big as half a pistol bullet, by
which you may judge the quickness of the electrical fire, which by this
instance seems to be greater than that of sound, light, or animal
sensation. <fontfamily><param>Times</param>


</fontfamily>What I can remember of the matter is that I was about to
try whether the bottles or jars were fully charged by the strength and
length to my hand, as I commonly used to do, and which I might safely
enough have done if I had not held the chain in the other hand. I then
felt what I know not how to describe... a universal blow throughout my
whole body from head to foot, which seemed within as well as without;
after which the first thing I took notice of was a violent quick
shaking of my body, which gradually remitting, my sense as gradually
returned, and then I thought the bottles must be discharged, but could
not conceive how, till at last I perceived the chain in my hand, and
recollected what I had been about to do. That part of my hand and
fingers which held the chain was left white, as though the blood had
been driven out, and remained so eight or ten minutes after, feeling
like dead flesh; and I had a numbness in my arms and back of my neck,
which continued till the next morning, but wore off. Nothing remains
now of the shock but a soreness in my breastbone, which feels as if it
had been bruised. I did not fall, but suppose I should have been
knocked down if I had received the stroke in my head. The whole was
over in a minute.<fontfamily><param>Times</param>


</fontfamily>You may communicate this to Governor Bowdoin as a caution
to him, but do not make it more public, for I am ashamed to have been
guilty of so notorious a blunder; a match for that of the Irishman whom
my sister told me of, who, to divert his wife, poured the bottle of gun
powder on the live coal; or that of the other, who, being about to
steal powder, made a hole in the cask with a hot
iron.<fontfamily><param>Times</param>


</fontfamily>B. Franklin<fontfamily><param>Times</param>


Hapy Holidays, All!


Dewey


</fontfamily>

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Dewey I. Dykstra, Jr. Phone: (208)385-3105

Professor of Physics Dept: (208)385-3775

Department of Physics/SN318 Fax: (208)385-4330

Boise State University dykstrad@varney.idbsu.edu

1910 University Drive Boise Highlanders

Boise, ID 83725-1570 novice piper


"Physical concepts are the free creations of the human mind and

are not, however it may seem, uniquely determined by the external

world."--A. Einstein in The Evolution of Physics with L. Infeld,

1938


"Don't mistake your watermelon for the universe." --K. Amdahl in

There Are No Electrons, 1991.

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