![]() And in 1732 he inaugurated his famous Poor Richard's Almanack with a hoax predicting the death of rival almanac publisher Titan Leeds.įranklin perpetrated his most famous fraud in 1747. ![]() At age 17, in order to land a job in Philadelphia, Franklin faked his credentials as a journeyman printer. At age 16, prohibited by his youth and indentured status from writing newspaper articles, he began submitting them under the pseudonym "Silence Dogood," a fictitious middle-aged widow. More incriminating than any of these details is Franklin's long, well-documented record as a hoaxer. This cuts no ice with Tucker, though, since William-no scientist-was a well-known scalawag. If so, why would Franklin have waited four months to report so momentous an event? Unlike Franklin, Priestly names a witness: Franklin's son, William. Tucker likewise is suspicious of an account penned 14 years later by Franklin's disciple Joseph Priestley, who, though he wasn't present at the experiment, says it took place in June. ") seems out of character for someone renowned for forceful writing. The indirect phrasing ("The kite is to be raised. In fact, Franklin never explicitly says that it was he himself who performed the experiment. He gives no location, no exact time or date. 19, 1752 Pennsylvania Gazette-he omits many details. But in his account of the kite experiment-a brief article that ran in the Oct. Elsewhere in his published work Franklin shows himself to be a master of precise expression. Then there's Franklin's choice of language. If lightning did strike the kite, as Franklin says, the experimenter would almost certainly have been electrocuted. Even if that could be done, gravity would cause water to flow down the kite string onto the silk cord, ruining its insulating power. Were silk handkerchiefs of 1752 big enough for such a kite? Could the kite lift a brass key weighing a quarter of a pound, which Tucker says was typical of the day? Franklin recommends that the kite flyer stand "under some cover, so that the silk riband may not be wet." Tucker argues it's awfully tough to fly a kite from inside a shelter. Rather than being dissipated into the earth, the electrical charge stays in the key, which throws off sparks when approached, say, by the experimenter's finger. To the end of the string is tied a metal key, and to the key is attached a silk (nonconductive) cord, which the experimenter holds. This wire draws down "electrical fire" from the clouds, the charge being conducted earthward along the kite's rain-soaked string. From the kite's wooden frame there protrudes a metal wire. In Franklin's own account of his experiment (published in 1752), a kite fashioned from a silk handkerchief is set aloft in a storm. In Bolt of Fate: Benjamin Franklin and His Electric Kite Hoax (Public Affairs, $25), author Tom Tucker audaciously argues that one of history's most celebrated scientific experiments was a fiction. Few, though, know that he was also a prolific prankster. Most Americans know the highlights of this polymath's life. Benjamin Franklin: statesman, author, postmaster, inventor of the bifocal, the lending library and the Franklin stove.
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