The Rest Is History

Podbit · The Rest Is History

684. Franklin: Revenge of the American Genius (Part 2)

Explore episode Jul 1, 2026

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Franklin the Enlightenment Scientist: Kites, Lightning Rods, and Flippers

At 27:56 · chapter starts 26:10

Richard Robinson described Franklin's kite experiment as the great symbolic moment of the Enlightenment's project of freeing humanity from needless terrors, and Tom Holland agrees it is Franklin's most significant scientific achievement, even if he lightly mocks it as 'science is fun' for eight-year-olds. In June 1752, Franklin flew a wire-tipped kite into a Philadelphia thunderstorm with his son William, drew electric sparks from a cloud, and concluded that lightning was a physical electrical phenomenon — not divine wrath. The practical consequence was the lightning rod, which Franklin refused to patent so that it could be freely adopted to prevent city fires. He also invented bifocal spectacles in 1784, identified and named the Gulf Stream, demonstrated surface tension by pouring oil on a rough pond on Clapham Common, invented weather forecasting by analysing East Coast storm patterns, and — as a child — designed hand and foot flippers for swimming. A Russian scientist who tried to replicate the kite experiment a year later was electrocuted and killed, underscoring the genuine danger Franklin had courted.

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