Did Benjamin Franklin really fly a kite in a thunderstorm?

Most accounts treat the experiment as likely to have happened, but historians have not settled the question. The record is thin, the date is unknown, and some scholars have doubted that it took place at all. The familiar image of lightning striking a kite is a myth. Franklin also did not discover electricity with it. [1] [2]

Two sources underlie the story. The first is Franklin's October 1752 letter to Peter Collinson, published in December 1752 and read at the Royal Society. It says an experiment had succeeded in Philadelphia and explains how to repeat it, but it gives no date and does not clearly say Franklin did it himself. The second is Joseph Priestley's 1767 book on the history of electricity, written about 15 years later from what Franklin had apparently told him. [1] [3]

Priestley described a kite made from a large silk handkerchief and two sticks, with a silk line and a key. He said Franklin and his son William flew it in June 1752, and that Franklin touched the key with his knuckle and saw an electric spark. [3] [1]

Some scholars accept the experiment but question the date. Meteorologist Abbott Lawrence Rotch argued in 1906 that French correspondence pointed to late summer or early fall 1752 rather than June, though he did not doubt that it happened. The popular date of June 10 is a scholarly guess, not a documented fact. [3] [1]

Others doubt the experiment more deeply. Alexander McAdie argued in 1924 that Priestley's account conflicts with the safety precautions Franklin would have taken. He thought the Collinson letter read like a projected experiment rather than a performed one, and noted that the Pennsylvania Gazette carried no mention of it. If it happened, he placed it in September. Carl Van Doren wrote that the episode is firm in legend but dim in fact. Author Tom Tucker went further and proposed in 2003 that Franklin staged a hoax amid rivalry with British and French scientists. [3]

Defenders include historian Michael Brian Schiffer, who rebutted Tucker. He argued that Franklin would have known the penalty for being exposed in a fraud. Walter Isaacson found it unreasonable to think Franklin fabricated the facts, since there is no known case of him embellishing his scientific achievements. The sources here do not say which view most specialists hold, but the experiment is commonly described as probable rather than certain. [3]

Electricity was already known in the mid-1700s. Franklin was one of several thinkers who suspected lightning was a form of electricity. In 1749 and 1750 he proposed a test using a tall metal rod, and French experimenters carried it out successfully in May 1752. The kite is often said to have been struck by lightning, but Priestley never claimed that. A direct strike would probably have killed Franklin, as happened to Georg Wilhelm Reichmann in 1753 while he tried a lightning rod experiment. More likely the wet string and key picked up ambient charge from the storm. Smithsonian curator Harold Wallace says Franklin and William were probably sheltered in a shed rather than standing in a field, as many pictures show. [1] [4] [2]