ss became irksome to him and he retired from active
management of the printing house. Besides making many ingenious toys
and showy experiments, Franklin added three contributions of real
importance to science.

1. He anticipated Faraday in the discovery that the electricity in a
charged Leyden jar resides on the glass and not on the metal coatings.
He, however, made no generalizations from this discovery.

2. He advanced the fluid theory of electricity, recognizing clearly the
dual nature of the varieties commonly called positive and negative from
the mathematical symbols used to express them.

3. He established the identity of lightning and electricity.

To understand the importance of this last discovery we must remember
with what terror the world had hitherto regarded this bewildering
apparition of the sky. It was not so much the dread of feeling above
one an irresponsible power subject to a law that knows no sympathy with
human life, as the more debasing fear of superstition, that sees in the
red thunderbolt a deadly instrument of vengeance hurled by the hand of
an angry deity, and that loosens the inmost sinews of a man's moral
courage. With the knowledge that lightning is only a magnified
electrical spark, fell one of the last strongholds of false religion.
And there is something eminently fit in the fact that this lurking
mystery of the heavens was finally exploded by Dr. Franklin, the
exponent of common sense.

I am told by a specialist that the neatness and thoroughness of the
reasoning by which Franklin established his theory before proceeding to
experimentation are most laudable, and I am sure his letters of
explanation have a literary charm not often found in scientific
writing. The paper in which Franklin developed his theory and showed
how it might be tested by drawing lightning from the clouds by means of
a pointed wire set up on a steeple, was sent to his friend in England,
and there printed; and at the suggestion of the great Buffon the same
paper was translated into French. The pamphlet created a sensation in
France, and the proposed experiment was actually performed in the
presence of the king. Before the report, however, of the successful
experiment reached Franklin he had himself verified his theory, using a
kite to attain an altitude, as there was no spire or high building in
Philadelphia. Taking his son with him, he went to an old cow house in
the country, before a storm, and there, to catch