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Bolt Of Fate: Benjamin Franklin And His Electric Kite Hoax

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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."

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)

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.

I share the general consensus of other reviewers that "Bolt of Fate" is a middling exploration of an important period of scientific discovery in the 1740s-1760s. The premise of "Bolt" is pretty interesting, and it sheds light (lightning?) on the scientific and technical genius of Ben Franklin. But the author overstates his premise and does not clearly make his arguments.

The premise: Ben Franklin never did his famous experiment of flying a kite in a storm to prove that electricity from lightning is identical to electric produced by mechanical means. Franklin invented this claim -- though it's certainly a plausible experiment -- in order to counter his scientific rivals in England and France who had slighted his genuine discoveries and, in some cases, claimed them for his own. The success of this experiment-hoax led directly to recognition of Franklin's real achievements in eletrical experimentation, such as the identification and naming of the plus-minus electrical charges and the invention of the lightning rod. And with this fame, the author claims Franklin earned the credibility to be a key US ambassador to France during the American Revolution.

So, what's the problem? First, the author makes a good case that Franklin was underestimated by William Watson and Abbe Nollet, the leaders of the British and French scientific societies, respectively, in his day. Franklin was a better electrical scientist than either of those gentlemen, and their ignored, misunderstood, and/or stole his ideas for more than a decade. This interesting material is well-covered in "Bolt" and is probably not well-known. Franklin's proclivity for levity and jokes is well-known, and so the author makes the leap that he conducted hoaxes and exaggerations in his theoretical musings and suggestions for experiments. One of his suggestions, the author claims, would have killed people if they did it according to Franklin's vague design.

So far, so good. The problem is that the author does not consider the more obvious explanation: Franklin did the experiments he claimed to do. After all, others were able to do them, using his general instructions. Why couldn't he do it? Franklin's science did work, and it was proven to work. And Franklin was a confident, almost fearless man. He already had tried his hand at the cutting-edge of electrical science, so why wouldn't he take it all the way? The book would have been better if the author didn't push through on the hoax idea and just talked about the general battle across countries and oceans about who was truly making discoveries about electricity.

One more comment. I did not find the descriptions of the actual science to be sufficient. A basic description of the science of grounding of electricity would have been immensely helpful -- both what ground does, and what not ground leaves as a risk. This also would have enabled the author to do a better job of explaining why some of the leading scientists of the 18th century had things wrong about electricity (such as fluids), and how correct knowledge evolved.

If you're interested in Ben Franklin and his multitude of achievements, start with Franklin's "Autobiography," and then move onto a full-fledged modern biography. This book is a footnote.

[This review was presented at a meeting of the American Revolution Round Table in New York City, October 2, 2007.]

The title ... might lead you to think we're pondering an academic version of Discovery Channel's Mythbusters, but happily this book is a great deal more, a serious contribution to the history of science and its interplay with society.
One might think, since people have undoubtedly always received shocks when shuffling across carpets, that natural philosophers would have sustained a steady curiosity in the phenomenon through the centuries, and made consistent but plodding progress in examining it. Well, apparently not. Beginning around 1743, and peaking over the next ten years, electricity was suddenly a huge European fad that gripped everyone, from serious scientists to high society to middle-class dilettantes to fair-going country bumpkins. It was suddenly realized that static electricity could be generated at will, by creating friction against a spinning glass jar; and with it, you could not only attract confetti up to your hand, you could make bells ring without touching them, or inflame a glass of brandy. Better yet, you could--in the pure interest of science--ask a willing, electrically-charged young man and a willing but neutral young lady, to touch, and enjoy the mildly prurient result of their shared convulsive shock. In 1746, the invention of the Leyden jar, forerunner of the electrical storage battery, made these parlor tricks into a new mass entertainment, fascinating everyone from village taverns to royal palaces.
One who caught the bug was the successful Philadelphia entrepreneur, Benjamin Franklin. In March 1747, Franklin wrote a friend that he was "totally engrossed" in the subject. Tucker, who has written on the history of invention before, goes to some pains to demonstrate that Franklin made genuine scientific contributions to the subject over the next few years. Among other things, in the process of meticulous experimentation on the properties of electricity, it was Franklin who coined positive, negative, plus, minus, and battery as electrical terminology.
Franklin kept current with scientific progress in Europe, and he knew that he'd done original and valuable work. He reported his efforts in the detailed epistolary style of the day to members of the British Royal Society. But not only did the colonial unknown get no thanks and no recognition for his labors, one of the best-known British scientists, the man to whom his letters were entrusted, William Watson, proceeded to plagiarize him.
This is the point at which Tucker's revisionist thesis kicks in. A subsequent missive Franklin wrote in 1750 contained what was known as the "sentry box experiment," in which a long iron rod was to be erected vertically into the sky and bent around into an open-fronted sentry box so that the bottom of the rod, hanging free, would not get wet, and then a person could supposedly conduct electrical experiments with it during a thunderstorm! The author asserts that, though phrased in bland scientific terms, Franklin's "experiment" was intended, and would have been received, as a sarcastic invitation to his nemesis to go commit suicide. Fortunately, no one ever attempted the sentry-box as Franklin originally wrote it. In May of 1752, however, some French experimenters, having read it in translation and taken it seriously, made some common sense revisions. They set up the rod as directed, but left a Leyden jar in the sentry box rather than a person. When lightning struck the rod, the rod charged the Leyden jar just as static electricity would have, demonstrating that lightning was electricity. Twitting the Royal Society, the Frenchmen gave profuse tribute to the unknown American, and Benjamin Franklin became world-famous overnight.
This put him into a serious fix, however. The question now was, what had happened when he did the experiment? Tucker's thesis is that Franklin stepped back, punted, and scored a touchdown: he dreamed up the famous electric kite experiment, intimated--but never precisely declared in so many words--that he'd already done it, and claimed it proved conclusively that the spark you get at the doorknob and lightning are one and the same. Franklin's clincher was an assertion to the Europeans that, by the by, we in Pennsylvania are already using iron rods to protect our buildings ... which was a bold-faced fib, but which catapulted Franklin to even greater fame, and was quickly backed up by instructions casually published in his Almanac for 1753.
Franklin went, according to our author, from being a scientist whose hard work had not been credited to a scientist credited for a proof he hadn't really originated. We might like to believe that Franklin would struggle tenaciously for his due while piously disclaiming the applause for what he wasn't, but ... that wasn't Franklin. (Nor, of course, was it typical of any of his contemporaries, or of too many geniuses before or since.)
Tucker devotes a great deal of primary source research to showing us exactly why the image we all share--of heroic Ben mucking about with a kite and a key in a driving rainstorm--is preposterous and simply never happened. I found it both interesting and convincing. His corollary contention--that the fame Franklin achieved as a result of this never-denied myth enabled him to coax the French into an alliance twenty-five years later, and thus "won" the American Revolution--is considerably more arguable ... but still engaging and provocative speculation.
If you have any special interest in Franklin or in the science of the Age of Reason, I think you'll find Tom Tucker's Bolt of Fate both entertaining and worthwhile.

I give this book three stars because it is basically fun and entertaining. However, much of the speculation about Franklin's elaborate hoax is based on reading between the lines in letters that Franklin wrote, or in just analyzing his over-all personality. One has to wonder how accurate this approach is several centuries after the fact. If you have more time, I would suggest reading one of the books about Franklin's over-all scientific career instead of this book, or maybe along side this book.

I enjoyed this book because the author obviously likes and respects Benjamin Franklin so the story of how he flew the kite is one of a celebration of Franklin. As an ex-US History I know the playful mischiefness wit of Franklin is lost in our classrooms. The book does a great job of exposing this other side of Franklin so often lost.