Adobe FRAMEMAKER 7 Manual page 337

15 HTML and Web Publishing
Pioneers in Electricity
he phenomenon that Thales had observed and recorded in antiquity aroused the interest of many
scientists through the ages. They made various practical experiments in their efforts to identify the
elusive force that Thales had likened to a "soul" and which we now know to have been static electricity.
Of all forms of energy, electricity is the most baffling and difficult to describe. An electric current cannot
be seen. In fact it does not exist outside the wires and other conductors that carry it. A live wire carrying
a current looks exactly the same and weighs exactly the same as it does when it is not carrying a current.
An electric current is simply a movement or flow of electrons.
The following sections describe some pioneers in the advancement of our knowledge of electricity.
The Early Scientists
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin, the American statesman and scientist born in Boston in 1706, investigated the nature
of thunder and lightning by flying a child's kite during a thunderstorm. He had attached a metal spike to
the kite, and at the other end of the string to which the kite was tied he secured a key. As the rain soaked
into the string, electricity flowed freely down the string and Franklin was able to draw large sparks from
the key. Of course this could have been very dangerous, but he had foreseen it and supported the
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