The story of the famous Ben Franklin Kite experiment starts with a simple question: Can electricity be harnessed from the sky? This question, brought about by the speculations of Jean-Antoine Nollet, would eventually lead Ben Franklin to conduct his famous kite experiment. In 1749, it was such a poignant question that it had a prize offered for its answer. Denis Barberet wrote a dissertation on the subject, which earned the prize. Franklin, having previously been skeptical of the idea that lightning was attracted to high points, reversed his opinion at this point.
In 1752, two years later, Franklin wanted to put the electrical nature of lightning to the test. He proposed an experiment that is, in reality, much more complex than it is typically remembered as being. He would capture lightning in a Leyden jar, which stores electrical charge. To do this, he would place conductive rods at a tall height. But there was an issue: no spire in Philadelphia was tall enough to serve as a lightning rod. To circumvent that, Franklin would use a kite to raise the rods far above the highest spires.
In June of 1752, Franklin was ready to test his theory. Once a thunderstorm began, Franklin and his son William took to the fields to fly a kite. Its string was made of conductive hemp, and had a house key tied to it. The key was tied to a non-conductive silk cord which would allow the Franklins to safely maneuver the kite. They stood under a shed to keep the silk cord dry and non-conductive. The kite was never struck by lightning, but it gathered electricity from a nearby cloud. Franklin captured the electricity in his Leyden jar by touching its metal rod to the key, and the rest was history.
In August of 1753, Georg Wilhelm Richmann of Saint Petersburg attempted to recreate the experiment but was tragically killed by ball lightning.
