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Synopsis
Was Ben Franklin's famous electric kite experiment a hoax? And did it determine the course of the Amer. Revolution (AR)? Franklin flew a kite during a thunderstorm in the summer of 1752. The kite conducted elec. & threw a spark from a key attached to the kite's string, thus proving that lightning & elec. were one. Franklin's kite experiment was an internat. event & the Franklin that it presented to the world became the Franklin of myth. He charmed the French & became a celebrity when he traveled there during the AR, & the French powers were cajoled into joining us in our fight against the Brit. Franklin was an enthusiastic hoaxer who launched a number of pranks & deceptions. With the electric kite, he managed the greatest hoax of them all -- the trick that may have won the AR.
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About the Author
Tom Tucker is an award winning author who writes often about the history of invention. His most recent publication The Eclipse Project was issued by NASA, the result of a fellowship administered by NASA Dryden Flight Research Center and Stanford University. He lives in Rutherfordton, North Carolina, with his family.
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.
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- PublisherPublic Affairs
- Publication date2003
- ISBN 10 0756793327
- ISBN 13 9780756793326
- BindingHardcover
- LanguageEnglish
- Edition number1
- Number of pages297
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