Thunder and Lightning by Wilfrid Fonvielle details from sapnaonline

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1868. Excerpt: ... called an excitor, which permits us to manipulate large charges of electricity without receiving the slightest shock. M. de Romas, it is true, possessed only a part of Franklin's genius, for he drew no practical conclusion from his marvellous experiment. But does not his name deserve to remain associated with that of his immortal competitor? Perhaps we may be allowed to call attention to a singular circumstance which often presents itself in the history of science, and is none the less surprising on that account. How is it that these two men, living five thousand miles apart, who had never seen each other--who had, perhaps, never had the slightest communication one from the other, --how is it, we say, that they should have met together around the same idea, which for many thousands of years had never presented itself to the mind of any observer? Must we, then, believe that there is a season for fertile conceptions, a period marked out for the ripening of the fruit of thought, as well as for the fruit of the earth; and that these great conceptions are born everywhere when this season arrives? In any case, what appears to us scarcely less strange, is to see that the use of electric kites has completely vanished, in spite of the important services they might render to meteorology, and of the numerous researches made at the present day in this department of science. LXI. A FEW WORDS ON THE HISTORY OF LIGHTNING-CONDUCTORS. The first experiments on lightning-conductors, published in the Mimoires of the Academy of Sciences, bear the date of 1752; however, it was only in 1784 that the first conductor was fixed to a French building. If this honour was reserved for the Louvre, it was owing to the numerous reclamations of the celebrated watchmaker Leroy, who was a me...