Everyone is familiar with Benjamin Franklin’s famous electrical experiment involving a kite and a key because that is the single experiment that most history books focus on. However, that was not Franklin’s fundamental experiment on lightning nor is it the one that makes him rank among the pioneers of modern electrical science. He could not have attained that stature on the basis of a single experiment. In fact, the account of that experiment comes about two‐thirds into his book, Experiments and Observations on Electricity (pp. 106 ff.).
Most accounts of Franklin’s research, including the kite experiment, make it appear that he was trying to determine whether lightning is an electrical phenomenon. However, readers of Franklin’s book will soon learn that he was testing something quite different, namely, whether clouds are electrified. Furthermore, the electrification of clouds was not the primary subject of his research; rather this topic arose as an afterthought. The experiments also resulted in the invention of the lightning rod.
Experiments and Observations on Electricity is one of the most important scientific treatises of the eighteenth century and a work which laid the foundations of the science of electricity. It also established the language that we still use in discussing electrical phenomena today, including plus or positive, minus or negative, and electrical battery. It is also important because it presents a large variety of important experimental discoveries, such as Franklin’s analysis of the “Leyden jar”, the first capacitor or condenser. His experiments, using this novelty of the time, produced electrical effects on a grand scale. Some of these experiments are still used in introductory courses on electricity.
The book also presents Franklin’s theory of electrical action which, for the first time, enabled experimenters to make accurate predictions of the outcome of laboratory experiments. This theory transformed the subject of electricity into a proper science and still serves, with some major modifications, as the basis of our discussions of electrical phenomena today. Perhaps most important from the point of view of the eighteenth century, Franklin’s study of electricity and the invention of the lightning rod dealt a major blow to superstition. Lightning would no longer be considered an explosion of the forces of darkness or a warning to sinners from an angry god. He also showed that lightning did not only travel from the heavens to the earth but also from the earth to the clouds.
The Octavo edition of Experiments and Observations on Electricity is a reproduction of a first edition from the library of John Warnock, Chief Executive Officer of Adobe Systems, Inc. The experiments were communicated in a series of 13 letters to Mr Peter Collinson written between 1751 and 1754. Mr Collinson collected the letters and had them printed in London. The book contains three parts: Letters 1‐4 written in 1751, Letters 5‐11 written in 1753, and Letters 12‐13 written in 1754. It also includes an excellent introductory essay by I. Bernard Cohen which discusses the historical significance of the work and describes the binding, collation, and provenance of the volume used for filming.
The CD‐ROM contains three versions of the page images in Adobe Acrobat format: Browse (72 dpi), Read (144 dpi), and Examine (432 dpi). There is also a thumbnail version with 15 thumbnail images to a page that can serve as a reference or for quick selection of a particular page in Read mode. A print version (72 dpi) appears as a black and white version of the Browse mode and permits printing the text of the book; but it is not intended for viewing, as the Browse mode is more suitable at this resolution.
A reader selects the image version most suitable to his or her needs during a particular session and can switch easily between one and another as desired. The greater the resolution of the file, the longer it takes to display and to refresh the screen with each successive portion. Following the instructions in the Setup and Tips and Help sections will lead to a more enjoyable reading experience.
Read mode enlarges the text to 200 percent and reads very nicely on a monitor. A researcher who wants to examine the paper or to study particular words can enlarge the text even further to 800 percent. This is particularly helpful to read light impressions where some letters might not have been inked enough to print clearly. It is also helpful to read text that appears in the shadow of page wrinkles or creases or under‐water stains. At magnification levels above 400 percent, rounded letters like o, c, e, d, etc., appear jagged in Read mode. One can switch to the much higher resolution of Examine mode where these letters still appear crisp even at 800 percent magnification. However, at such high levels of resolution, even fast microprocessors will display the page images too slowly for an enjoyable reading experience.
The high magnification levels of Examine mode permit studying the paper quality, end papers, binding, and tooling almost as if holding the original and examining it with a magnifying glass. One can easily see the fibers and grain of the paper or the fibers of the binding board on a damaged corner. One might also use this mode to study the foxing (rust‐red spotting of the paper) on some pages or to scrutinize the engravings at the beginning and end of the sections, drop caps, or printer’s devices.
While the text displays in an image format, one can also search the full text because there is an ASCII text version laid out identically to the page image and linked to it. However, to use the search feature effectively, one may need to be familiar with the peculiarities of colonial American spelling. For example magnetick, crouded (crowded), tho’ (though), perswade (persuade), try’d (tried), phial (vial), shews (shows) can only be retrieved using that spelling. Long Ses have been converted to short Ses, though. Occurrences of the search term appear under highlighting which draws attention to it but may make it a little difficult to read.
The search feature in Adobe Acrobat works fine for individual words; but some of the options in the dialog window don’t work as one would expect. For example, using “word stemming” to search for “electri” retrieves only instances of hyphenation (electri‐). It does not locate “electricity”, “electrified”, “electrical”, etc. The “sounds like” option retrieves “priced”, “proceed”,”purgative”, and “practical” when looking for “persuade.” The “proximity” option is apparently inactive and leads to bewilderment. Entering more than one term in the search window produces no results; and there is no explanation of how to use this option.
On the other hand, the “match case” option lets readers restrict queries to terms that match a particular typography. As nouns are capitalized almost indiscriminately, even within sentences, this feature may not be as useful as it appears. The “thesaurus” option is probably the most useful feature. Not only will it allow researchers to truncate words for plural forms of nouns or verb endings; but it will also retrieve synonyms. For example, a search for “accumulate” not only retrieves “accumulated” and “accumulation” but also “gather”, and “collected”.
Experiments and Observations on Electricity offers a high‐quality reproduction of the first edition book on which it is based. It is highly readable and easily searched or printed. In some ways, the electronic version is more serviceable than the printed version. At the price of a modern hardcover book, the average reader can now own a facsimile of this first edition. Highly recommended.
