Franklin's "electric superweapon"

[pynchonoid]

BOLT OF FATE: Benjamin Franklin and His Electric Kite
Hoax
Tom Tucker. PublicAffairs, $25 (320p) ISBN 1891620703
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. (June)

<http://publishersweekly.reviewsnews.com/index.asp?layout=article&articleid=CA299758>



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