He coined a number of terms used today, including battery, conductor and electrician. In 1753, he received the prestigious Copley Medal from the Royal Society, in recognition of his “curious experiments and observations on electricity.”Photograph of a painting depicting Franklin's famous kite and key experiment. Of course, a shed roof would have offered It all started with a letter. The kite featured a pointed wire intended to draw electricity from a cloud and zap it down wet twine to a metal key. From New Experiments and Observations on Electricity by Benjamin Franklin, 1751.Engraving of Benjamin Franklin's contemporary, British scientist Joseph Priestley. After all, it's mad science at its best -- a stormy night, a  bold idea, and a total disregard for lab safety.I am a freelance science journalist, bringing you interesting science tidbits, tales of discovery and critical looks at everything from deadly diseases to spaceI am a freelance science journalist, bringing you interesting science tidbits, tales of discovery and critical looks at everything from deadly diseases to space exploration. Franklin’s experiment demonstrated the connection between lightning and electricity.Here’s how the experiment worked: Franklin constructed a simple kite and attached a wire to the top of it to act as a lightning rod. A month earlier it was successfully done by Thomas-François Dalibard in northern France. What could possibly go wrong?The problem, of course, is that if the key had been charged by an actual lightning strike, touching it would probably have zapped Franklin with a fatal shock, and the course of American history would have gone very differently. He told Collinson about his latest brilliant scientific idea: a lightning rod. He also had a house key, a Leyden jar (a device that could store an electrical charge for later use), and a sharp length of wire. The connection between electricity and lightning was known but not fully understood.

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Franklin became interested in electricity in the mid-1740s, a time when much was still unknown on the topic, and spent almost a decade conducting electrical experiments. Charles Turner (English, 1774-1857) | 1836 | National Portrait Gallery, London At the end of the string, he placed a metal key in a Leiden Jar (or Leyden Jar) designed to store electrical charges [source: Code Check].

On June 15, on a stormy Philadelphia night, Franklin and his son sent a kite, a wire, and a key aloft into the storm - or so the story goes.

As the story goes, the kite was struck by lightning, which electrified the key and gave Franklin … And in fact, Dalibard tried out Franklin's lightning rod before Franklin himself could do it, on May 10, 1752.A second French scientist, recorded only as M. Delor, replicated the experiment a week later. The Electrified Key of Benjamin Franklin is the 55th episode of Legends of the Hidden Temple. Why both? He perceived a very evident electric spark,” Priestley wrote.Using the Leyden jar, Franklin “collected electric fire very copiously,” Priestley recounted. By sticking a 30-foot metal rod into the air during a storm, Franklin suggested, you could attract a bolt of lightning and then divert the energy into a Letters between scientists weren't really private correspondence in those days. By then, an English scientist named John Canton had also performed the lightning rod experiment in July 1752, and that August, As brief as it is, the Gazette story is the only firsthand account of Franklin's now-famous experiment. If it had been, he probably would have been electrocuted, experts say. “To demonstrate, in the completest manner possible, the sameness of the electric fluid with the matter of lightning, Dr. Franklin, astonishing as it must have appeared, contrived actually to bring lightning from the heavens, by means of an electrical kite, which he raised when a storm of thunder was perceived to be coming on.”Despite a common misconception, Benjamin Franklin did not discover electricity during this experiment—or at all, for that matter.