What has been usually
considered his first discovery was the now familiar fact that northeast
storms on the Atlantic coast begin to leeward. The Pennsylvania
fireplace he invented was an ingenious application to the warming and
ventilating of an apartment of the laws that regulate the movement of
hot air. At the age of forty-one he became interested in the subject of
electricity, and with the aid of many friends and acquaintances pursued
the subject for four years, with no thought about personal credit for
inventing either theories or processes, but simply with delight in
experimentation and in efforts to explain the phenomena he observed. His
kite experiment to prove lightning to be an electrical phenomenon very
possibly did not really draw lightning from the cloud; but it supplied
evidence of electrical energy in the atmosphere which went far to prove
that lightning was an electrical discharge. The sagacity of Franklin's
scientific inquiries is well illustrated by his notes on colds and their
causes. He maintains that influenzas usually classed as colds do not
arise, as a rule, from either cold or dampness. He points out that
savages and sailors, who are often wet, do not catch cold, and that the
disease called a cold is not taken by swimming. He maintains that people
who live in the forest, in open barns, or with open windows, do not
catch cold, and that the disease called a cold is generally caused by
impure air, lack of exercise, or overeating.
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