Ben Franklin's DEATH RAY
Douglas Rushkoff is a guest blogger.
Nate Dimeo, an NPR reporter, has been creating some fascinating audio at a site he called The Memory Palace. These are highly textured historical narratives about stuff we might not know or remember.
My favorite is a piece on a widespread fear among the British that Franklin had invented a lightning-bolt gun - and such rumors led many to shun lightning rods on their homes, in turn leading to countless unnecessary fires.
the latest
latest episodes
Man, I love Ben Franklin! Rock star, sex god, scientist and diplomat, and in his spare time, he discovered electricity and scared the bejesus out of the Brits, just for laughs.
My favorite story about Ben is how he was a fastidious collector of data, and during his diplomatic missions to and from the colonies to Europe, he would take temperature readings of the water by dropping a thermometer over the side of the ship, you know, just for shits and giggles. And that's how he discovered the gulf stream.
So Ben Franklin was his century's Dr. Strangelove? Who knew?
I think I speak for everyone when I say PEW, PEW, PEW-PEW, PEW!
#1: Rock star? Does that mean that he invented electric amplification as well?
Please don't give Jerry Bruckheimer and Nicholas Cage any more ideas. The last thing the world needs is "National Treasure 3: High Voltage."
Aw, man. These episodes are great, but they're too short!
For more ben franklin lore, i recommend "drunk history"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YjZR1Rjj_p0
I remember reading in The Book of Lists years ago that Franklin was a libertine, some sort of free love enthusiast who took part in 18th century-style orgies. I never found info on that anywhere else. Did the Lists make shit up? I've always relied on them for the important things, like which popes had mistresses and children and so on.
@4:
Actually, he invented energy drinks.
@5:
Then we definitely shouldn't Bruckheimer know about Franklin's idea to interrupt the gulf stream, in order to throw Britain into a new ice age.
Personally don't like the style of this radio capsule that much - a little too cool and "kickass" for me. But I am indeed a Franklin fan, and am not waiting for Jerry Bruckheimer. See www.BenFranklinMovie.com
I for one welcome our philandering, ray-gun wielding founding father overlords.
There is no scientific evidence that lightning rods actually prevent lightning damage.
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2286/do-lightning-rods-really-work
Wait, wait. You mean he didn't invent lightning bolt death rays??
@11, well you're welcome to take your chances.
Airship@~11: I have personally witnessed buildings that were struck by lightning without adequate protection suffering damage to electrical and other cabling systems (especially low voltage voice/data), while the same buildings, once properly grounded, suffering no ill effects after massive electrical storms. Anecdotal, yes, but good enough for me. Ceil Adams says, toward the bottom of the your linked article: "They probably do work, but maybe not as well as was once believed."
Now, don't get me started on "surge protectors." I had a transformer blowing out on a pole on my street take out the power supply, hard drive, and logic board of one of my computers that was not powered up; connected through one of these things.
I worked in a building that was obsessively, you might even say excessively grounded. It had heavy I-beams sticking up at angles above the blast bays that were the highest point on the building. They were wired into the copper grid buried below the water table underneath the building, just like everything else.
Lightning used to go sideways past trees taller than our building to hit us. I counted seven strikes inside of ten minutes once.
So, I am prepared to believe that lightning rods work. Or that Zeus hates rocket scientists, one or the other.
#1: Rock star? Does that mean that he invented electric amplification as well?
Nope, but he did invent the glass harmonica, which sounds a lot like a Theremin, but is played with water.
There's no scientific evidence that the straihgtdope.com gets everything right 100% of the time. Call me old fashioned, but I'm going to fall back on 200 years of scientific evidence, even if it does contradict some website, and install lightning rods.
"Or that Zeus hates rocket scientists..."
FTW! =D
Is it just me, or would "Ben Franklin's Death Ray" be an awesome name for a band?
Oh, I wonder if there's some lesson there to be learned about people doing something inadvisable because of a perceived threat that's been totally overblown...
Hmmm.....
Mister Moofoo: Not bad, though there is already Deathray Davies.
I thought Tesla invented the death ray/lighting gun?
You can fool some of the British all of the time.