Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 25.djvu/697

Rh was not received without considerable opposition. A sharp shock of an earthquake having been experienced in Massachusetts in 1755, this was forthwith attributed to the evil influences of Franklin's lightning-rods. A Boston clergyman preached against them in 1770 as "impious contrivances to prevent the execution of the wrath of Heaven." Even as late as 1826, an engineer in the employment of the British Government recommended that all lightning-rods should be removed from public buildings as dangerous expedients, and in 1838 the Governor-General and Council of the East India Company ordered that all lightning-rods should be removed from public buildings, arsenals, and powder-magazines throughout India, and only became reconciled to their restoration after a large magazine and corning-house, not furnished with a conductor, had been blown up during a storm.

Franklin was so much in earnest in reference to his invention that he sent a friend at his own charge through the principal towns of the New England Colonies to make known the powers and virtues of the lightning-rod. In the "Poor Richard" for 1758, a kind of almanac or manual which he was at that time publishing, he gave specific instructions for the erection of his rods. The second conductor which he himself constructed was placed upon the house of Mr. West, a wealthy merchant of Philadelphia. A few months after this had been erected a storm burst over the town, and a flash of lightning was seen to strike the point of the conductor, and to spread itself out as a sheet of flame at its base. It was afterward found that about two inches and a half of the brass point had been dissipated into the air, and that immediately beneath the metal was melted into the form of an irregular blunt cap. The house, nevertheless, was quite uninjured. The sheet of flame seen at the base of the conductor Franklin correctly ascribed to the ground having been very dry, and to there not having been a sufficiently capacious earth contact under those circumstances. He nevertheless shrewdly, and quite justifiably, assumed that in this case Nature had itself pronounced an unmistakable verdict in favor of his invention.

The controversy concerning the efficacy of lightning-rods continued to agitate the councils of scientific men, notwithstanding this memorable demonstration of their efficiency; but, upon the whole, the new doctrines made their way into the confidence of the intelligent classes of the community. The most important circumstance in connection with the early fortunes of the invention, perhaps, was the admirable series of reports and instructions which were issued by the French Government between the years 1823 and 1867, and to which Mr. Anderson now once again, and not superfluously, draws public attention in his recent pamphlet entitled "Information about Lightning-Conductors issued by the Academy of Sciences of France." The first of these reports was drawn up in 1823 by Gay-Lussac, the discoverer of the law of the expansibility of gases, the companion of Humboldt, and the