Bolt Of Fate: Benjamin Franklin And His Electric Kite Hoax [Hardcover]

Tommy N. Tucker (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 17, 2003

Was Benjamin Franklin's famous electric kite experiment a fraud? And did it determine the course of the American Revolution?. Every schoolchild in America knows that Benjamin Franklin flew a kite during a thunderstorm in the summer of 1752. Electricity from the clouds above traveled down the kite's twine and threw a spark from a key that Franklin had attached to the string. He thereby proved that lightning and electricity were one. What many of us do not realize is that Franklin used this breakthrough in his day's intensely competitive field of electrical science to embarrass his French and English rivals. His kite experiment was an international event and the Franklin that it presented to the world--a homespun, rural philosopher-scientist performing an immensely important and dangerous experiment with a child's toy--became the Franklin of myth. In fact, this sly presentation on Franklin's part so charmed the French that he became an irresistible celebrity when he traveled there during the American Revolution. The crowds and the journalists, and the ladies, cajoled the French powers into joining us in our fight against the British. What no one has successfully proven until now--and what few have suggested--is that Franklin never flew the kite at all. Benjamin Franklin was an enthusiastic hoaxer. And with the electric kite, he performed his greatest hoax. As Tucker shows, it was this trick that may have won the American Revolution.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

According to Tucker, who writes on the history of invention, Benjamin Franklin's "multifaceted genius" had a hidden side: "He was also a splendid master of the hoax." And, notes Tucker, Franklin had reason to perpetrate a hoax on the scientific establishment, then embodied in Britain's Royal Society, where the colonial printer was not taken seriously as a scientist. Franklin's legendary electric kite experiment, Tucker asserts, was a myth propagated by Franklin himself that had repercussions even for the Revolution: the British feared that Franklin had created an electric superweapon that, in the words of Franklin's contemporary, Horace Walpole, "would reduce St. Paul's to a handful of ashes." Tucker bases his hoax theory on a reading of primary sources. A Franklin revival seems to be underway, and readers may want to read this heterodox study along with more general portraits of the man, such as Edmund Morgan's recent Benjamin Franklin and Walter Isaacson's forthcoming biography, due out in July. Illus.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Scientific American

Did Franklin really fly that kite? Schiffer says yes, Tucker says no. Nobody knows. Schiffer, professor of anthropology at the University of Arizona, accepts the tradition of the kite experiment, although he says it is "a long and inconclusive story." Tucker, a science writer, offers two reasons in particular for rejecting the kite story. One is that in describing the experiment in the newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette, Franklin does not say that he did it. The other is that the experiment as Franklin described it would be unlikely to succeed because of the design of the kite and the difficulty of flying it under the conditions outlined by Franklin. Whatever the truth, the kite experiment is a footnote to the rapid blossoming of electrical technology in the 18th century. Both authors tell that story well.

Editors of Scientific American

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: PublicAffairs; 1 edition (June 17, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1891620703
• ISBN-13: 978-1891620706
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,063,774 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars More Benjamin?, August 14, 2003

By 

Bruce Loveitt (Ogdensburg, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Bolt Of Fate: Benjamin Franklin And His Electric Kite Hoax (Hardcover)

In the last couple of years we've had major biographies of Benjamin Franklin by H.W. Brands, Walter Isaacson, and Edmund Morgan. Now we have Tom Tucker's take on Franklin the "electrical scientist." (Gosh, we haven't even gotten to the tricentennial of Franklin's birth, which will be in 2006. One wonders what's in the publishing pipeline!) This book has quite a few pros and cons. Here are the pros: Because of the 3 recent general biographies, we probably didn't need another one. Mr. Tucker has done us a service by electing to concentrate on Franklin the scientist. And although Mr. Tucker's background is in writing about science, he has an engaging "popular" style. There's nothing dry about this book. Another plus is that Mr. Tucker goes to great pains to show us how myth becomes enshrined as reality. He makes a pretty good case that Franklin never actually flew his "electric kite." Looking carefully at the primary sources, we see that Franklin gave instructions on how to construct such a kite, but never actually claimed to have conducted the "kite in a thunderstorm" experiment himself. He was also uncharacteristically evasive when questioned about details of the experiment. Mr. Tucker also points out that Franklin was not averse to a bit of self-promotion. If people wanted to assume that he had flown a kite in a thunderstorm....well, he wasn't going to disabuse them of the notion. Likewise, although Franklin came up with the idea and "blueprint" for the lightning rod, he apparently tooted his own horn by lying to his European "colleagues" when he claimed that lightning rods were being attached to public buildings in Philadelphia earlier than the historical evidence shows they were. Franklin was presumably miffed that the Royal Society in London had been virtually ignoring the papers he had written on electricity up to this point, and was trying to gain some respect. (There is also evidence that Royal Society member William Watson was trying to claim some of Franklin's theories and experiments had originated, independently, with himself.) So, those are the pros. What are the cons? Perverse as it may seem, zeroing in on Franklin the scientist is one of them. Frankly, (sorry, I couldn't resist) there isn't a whole lot to zero in on. Taking 237 pages to prove that Franklin didn't fly a kite in a thunderstorm, and that he lied about when the first domestic lightning rod was constructed, can tax your patience. Also, anyone who has read anything previous on Franklin won't be surprised by the author's comments that Franklin was fond of hoaxes, practical jokes, and that he was a lot more sophisticated than his public persona. However, the most grievous "negative" is that the author tries to assert that Franklin was responsible for our victory in the Revolutionary War. The logic is as follows: Franklin's self-promotion as an "electrical scientist" resulted in his being immensely popular in France. He parlayed this popularity into gaining a great deal of influence with Louis XVI, Marie Antoinette, et al. Bingo....he convinced the French to form an alliance with the upstart Americans, which enabled us to win the war. While it is true that Franklin was popular and had influence, it is a long stretch to say that he was single-handedly responsible for the French coming in on the American side. Other Americans, such as John Adams, played key roles, and the French had excellent reasons of their own to enter the fray. Mr. Tucker may have felt that the basic theme of his book didn't quite pack enough of a wallop, and so he decided to "jazz" the narrative up with "The French Connection." But, he took things a bit too far. In any case, this book is worth reading for its exploration of myth vs. reality and for its elucidation of 18th century professional jealousy and backbiting within the world of the "electrical scientists."

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Bolt of Fate, February 6, 2009

By 

Sam Adams (Minnesota. USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bolt of Fate: Benjamin Franklin & His Electric Kite Hoax (Hardcover)

This book is not written in scientific prose. It is a literary text, foremost. It is not a history or chronicle of the investigations into electricity during Franklin's time, so do not expect to read of the reasoning or structured experimentation behind the electrical displays, behind the silk thread, the Leyden jars, the glass rods and cork balls.

The subtitle of the book refers to the famous kite experiment reported by Franklin in 1752 (chapter 14 introduces the story). The author's research finds no evidence of Franklin having conducted the experiment. A theme running through the book is that Franklin was not above the expedient lie. It is an interesting book, but it cannot stand on its own as a study of 18th century electrical science or of Franklin's role in it.

I was surprised to read (p 136) that Immanuel Kant called Franklin the Modern Prometheus, a nomination that Mary Shelly used as the subtitle of her 1818 novel Frankenstein. Was she intending a reference to Franklin, using this subtitle and naming her scientist Frankenstein? (Franklin/Frankenstein)

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Interesting Theory, but How Accurate is It?, May 17, 2004

By 

Jeffery Steele (Taipei, Taiwan) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Bolt Of Fate: Benjamin Franklin And His Electric Kite Hoax (Hardcover)

Tom Tucker's thesis -- that Ben Franklin's most famous and dramatic scientific experiment was a hoax -- holds up surprisingly well for most of his book. Tucker competently details the history of the eighteenth century science surrounding electricity, the various experiments with the phenomenon throughout Europe, and the personalities involved with its controversies. He is almost convincing in his portrayal of Franklin as something of an intellectually ambitious crank, using the sage of Philadelphia's numerous and well-documented literary hoaxes, among other things, to support the case for Franklin's alleged scientific hoaxes (the flying of the kite being but one of several scientific hoaxes Tucker says Franklin made up).

Tucker undermines his own book, however, by stretching his claims too far. He argues that Franklin's most famous scientific hoax was responsible for his oversized reputation in Europe, and that this reputation among Europeans was responsible, in turn, for Franklin's success as a diplomat in France during the Revolutionary War. Since France's support was a major factor in the American colonies winning their freedom from England, Tucker believes Franklin's hoax might have freed the American colonists: "It might have been a kite, the story of a kite, the hoax that won the American Revolution."

Of course that's a ludicrous judgment. And this highly questionable claim led me to look into how well Tucker's other claims on Franklin stand up. Even though "Bolt of Fate" was only just recently published, Walter Isaacson, the author of "Benjamin Franklin: An American Life" deals with Tucker's claims in a long footnote in his biography, and he is mostly dismissive of them. Isaacson writes, "[Tucker's] book does not address the detailed evidence I. Bernard Cohen cites on this question and is, I think, unpersuasive. Franklin's kite description is in no ways similar to his literary hoaxes, and if untrue would have been an outright lie rather than a hoax. Tucker also makes the odd allegation that Franklin's description of his sentry box experiment was a death threat to the president of the London's Royal Society.... The comprehensive analysis by Cohen, a professor of the history of science who is the foremost authority on Franklin's electrical work, addresses fully and more convincingly the issues surrounding Franklin's sentry box, kite, and lightning rods." [Page 534]

I have not read Cohen's research, and so I'm not able to affirm Isaacson's judgments comparing it and Tucker's work. I can say that there are parts of Tucker's book which are interesting and valuable, and other parts in which its claims seem greatly overdone. Read "Bolt of Fate" for enjoyment, but also with more than a little caution.