Category: Science
Authors/Producers: Tom Tucker
Publication/Release Date: 2005
Number of Pages: 297
Cover: Hard Cover
About this Publication:
Award-winning writer Tom Tucker asks, “Was Benjamin Franklin’s famous electric kite experiment a hoax? And did it determine the course of the American Revolution?” Tucker looks at Franklin’s English, French, and Russian rivals during the intensely competitive scientific time of the mid-eighteenth century, and argues that the image that Franklin presented to the world—that of a homespun, rural philosopher-scientist performing an immensely important and dangerous experiment with a child’s toy—was key to charming the French and enlisting their crucial help in the fight against the British.
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