Lightning Conductors. F.C.S. Richard Anderson
got fiercely irritated that another man, a previously quite unknown person, in a distant land, should have dared to snatch from him his scientific laurels. Accordingly, he used all his influence among the public, in the scientific world, and at the French court, where he held a high position as tutor of the King’s children, not only to depreciate Franklin’s lightning conductors, but to set them down as something like an imposture. In various treatises and articles published in learned papers, Abbé Nollet sought to prove that the person called Benjamin Franklin—in whose very existence he formerly refused to believe, but which he now grudgingly acknowledged—was an individual unacquainted even with the first principles of the science of electricity, and that his proposal for protecting houses against lightning was so absurd as not to be worth engaging the attention of any thinking man. More than this, he argued that the proposed lightning conductors were not only inefficacious, but positively dangerous. By thus joining in the vulgar cry of lightning being, so to speak, sucked from the clouds by Franklin’s conductors, the learned Abbé had the satisfaction of retarding their introduction in his own, as well as other European countries, for a number of years.
In France itself the thus awakened resistance to the setting-up of lightning conductors was strikingly shown by an incident which occurred at the town of St. Omer, not far from Calais. A manufacturer settled here, who had been in America, and there learnt to appreciate the usefulness of Franklin’s lightning conductors, had one made for his own house, and quietly fixed it to wall and roof. But the populace no sooner heard of it when there arose a public disturbance, and the iron rod was torn down by force. So far from repressing the rioters, the municipality of St. Omer, acting under priestly influence, forbade the manufacturer to erect another lightning conductor, on the ground that it was ‘against law and religion.’ Thereupon the bold manufacturer, a man of English descent, to try his right, appealed to the tribunals, and the judges at last, after protracted pleadings, not being able to discover any statutes against the fastening of metal rods to buildings, declared that the thing might be done, but with precautions. The lawyer who pleaded the case of the lightning conductors before the French tribunals at this momentous period was a very young man, quite unknown to fame at the time, but destined for a superabundance of it. His name was Robespierre.
Perhaps the violent opposition which the erection of lightning conductors—or ‘Franklin rods,’ as they were often called—met almost everywhere, would have proved more effective than it ultimately turned out, had not the great discoverer himself showed admirable temper in meeting his enemies, thus pouring oil upon the stormy waters. His calmness and confidence is admirably shown in a letter, dated July 2, 1768, addressed to Professor John Winthrop, of Cambridge, in answer to one in which astonishment was expressed at the ‘force of prejudice, even in an age of so much knowledge and free inquiry,’ of not placing lightning conductors upon all elevated buildings. Franklin—or he must now be called Dr. Franklin, having received the degrees of LL. D. and D. C. L. from the universities of St. Andrew’s, Edinburgh, and Oxford—was residing in England at the time, as agent of the people of Pennsylvania. He was thoroughly acquainted with the state of public feeling, yet so far from being angry, smiled down upon it like a true philosopher. ‘It is perhaps not so extraordinary,’ he wrote to his friend, ‘that unlearned men, such as commonly compose our church vestries, should not yet be acquainted with, and sensible of, the benefits of metal conductors in averting the stroke of lightning, and preserving our houses from its violent effects, or that they should still be prejudiced against the use of such conductors, when we see how long even philosophers, men of science and of great ingenuity, can hold out against the evidence of new knowledge that does not square with their preconceptions; and how long men can retain a practice that is conformable to their prejudices, and expect a benefit from such practice, though constant experience shows its inutility. A late piece of the Abbé Nollet, printed last year in the Memoirs of the French Academy of Sciences, affords strong instances of this; for though the very relations he gives of the effects of lightning in several churches and other buildings show clearly that it was conducted from one part to another by wires, gildings, and other pieces of metal that were within, or connected with the building, yet in the same paper he objects to the providing of metallic conductors without the building, as useless or dangerous. He cautions people not to ring the church bells during a thunderstorm, lest the lightning, in its way to the earth, should be conducted down to them by the bell ropes, which are but bad conductors; and yet he is against fixing metal rods on the outside of the steeple, which are known to be much better conductors, and through which lightning would certainly choose to pass, rather than through dry hemp. And though, for a thousand years past, church bells have been solemnly consecrated by the Romish Church, in expectation that the sound of such blessed bells would drive away thunderstorms, and secure buildings from the stroke of lightning; and, during so long a period, it has not been found by experience, that places within the reach of such blessed sound are safer than others where it is never heard, but that, on the contrary, the lightning seems to strike steeples by choice, and at the very time the bells are ringing, yet still they continue to bless the new bells, and jangle the old ones whenever it thunders.’
‘One would think,’ continues Dr. Franklin, with exquisite humour, ‘that it was now time to try some other trick. Ours is recommended, whatever the able French philosopher may say to the contrary, by more than twelve years’ experience, during which, among the great number of houses furnished with iron rods in North America, not one so guarded has been materially hurt by lightning, and many have been evidently preserved by their means; while a number of houses, churches, barns, ships, &c., in different places, unprovided with rods, have been struck and greatly damaged, demolished, or burnt. Probably, the vestries of English churches are not generally well acquainted with these facts; otherwise, since as good Protestants they have no faith in the blessing of bells, they would be less excusable in not providing this other security for their respective churches, and for the good people that may happen to be assembled in them during a tempest, especially as these buildings, from their greater height, are more exposed to the stroke of lightning than our common dwellings.’
While Franklin thus wrote of ‘the great number of houses furnished with iron rods in North America,’ there was not a single public building so protected in England. Several private persons had adopted them for their houses, following the example of Dr. William Watson—subsequently Sir William—vice-president of the Royal Society, who had been the first to set up a lightning conductor in England, erecting one over his cottage at Payneshill, near London, in 1762. But notwithstanding the evident utility of the ‘Franklin rods,’ they were refused where they were most wanted—for larger buildings, and particularly for churches. The ‘unlearned men, such as commonly compose our church vestries,’ openly declared against them, and among the clergy there was a steady, if often silent, antagonism to their introduction. The first movement towards its being upset was given by an occurrence which caused much commotion, and gave rise to a vast amount of discussion. On Sunday, June 18, 1764, a few minutes before three in the afternoon, the splendid steeple of St. Bride’s Church, in the city of London, one of the architectural monuments of Sir Christopher Wren, was struck by lightning, the flash being intensely vivid, blinding several people. The damage done was so serious that about ninety feet of the steeple had to be taken down entirely, while great and expensive repairs were required for the rest. Dr. Watson, as the first introducer, so one of the chief promoters of Franklin’s invention in England, took this opportunity of publishing in the ‘Philosophical Transactions’ a detailed account of the effects of lightning upon St. Bride’s steeple, explaining the potency of conductors in the very action of the electric force. He showed how the lightning first struck the metallic weathercock at the top of the steeple, and ran down, without injuring anything, the large iron bars by which it was supported. At the bottom of the bars, the electric force shattered a number of huge stones into fragments, to make its way to some other pieces of iron, inserted into the walls to give them strength. So it went on till there were no more metals, when havoc and destruction became the greatest. Thus, as Dr. Watson conclusively proved, the beautiful steeple of St. Bride was wilfully made over to ruin for want of a few hundred yards of iron, or other metal, which would lead the electric force harmlessly from the weathercock on the summit into the earth. He finished by telling in the plainest terms, to all on whom devolved the duty of taking care of churches, that it was neglectful, even to criminality, not to protect them by conductors against the always imminent danger of being struck