Book, Franklin on Electricity 5th Edition
Ascension#: 1988.017
As members of the gentry, the Randolphs likely would have shown an interest in the scientific advancements of the day and owned copies of books that dealt with the subject. This book by Benjamin Franklin, Experiments and Observations on Electricity, Made in Philadelphia in America, has a blue marbleized cover with Leather corners and spine. The edges of the book are also marbleized and on the front end sheet is a bookplate that reads “Buddle Atkinson presented 1898”. It is the fifth edition printed in 1774, which is actually a reprint of the fourth edition that was edited and footnoted by Franklin himself.
Benjamin Franklin was an apprentice to his older brother James in the printing business before going to work for William Bradford in New York and later Samuel Keimer in Philadelphia. Determined to start his own printing business, Franklin traveled to London where he secured employment sufficiently remunerative to set himself up back in Philadelphia by 1728. At the annual expense of approximately $80,000, he bought rags which he sold to paper mills which, in turn, produced the newsprint he required. By the end of Franklin's diplomatic service, some fifty-five years later, Pennslvania boasted a total of eighteen paper mills that had been established with Franklin's assistance, while his own press produced more than 850 titles of books and pamphlets. Nearly all of Franklin's work was done on an English Common Press, wherein each character was formed by an individual piece of type and produced by hand. Four to eight pages were usually printed on a single sheet of paper, which could be produced by two skilled workmen at a rate of four sheets per minute. By 1748 he retired from active participation in the printing business, turning management of the entreprise over to his partner, David Hall.
He concentrated his efforts on experiments conducted in his “electrical laboratory” where he built an electrical generator and his electrical experiments drew ever growing crowds of curious spectators. He also wrote letters concerning this work to a number of correspondents including London merchant and naturalist, Peter Collinson, who collected them and subsequently had them published in three separate pamphlets in 1751, 1753, and 1754. By 1774, five editions had appeared, and by 1783 the work had been translated into French, Italian, and German. According to one historian, “Benjamin Franklin's Experiments and Observations is the most important scientific book of eighteenth century America and established Franklin as the first American scientist with an international reputation. In this famous treatise on electricity, Franklin outlined experiments which proved that lightning is an electrical phenomenon and deduced the positive and negative nature of electrical charges.”
In regards to when his papers on electricity were first published, Franklin remarked,
Obliged as we were to Mr. Collinson for the present of
the tube, etc., I thought it right he should be informed of our success in
using it, and wrote him several letters containing accounts of our
experiments. He got them read in the Royal Society, where they were at first
not thought worth so much notice as to be printed in their Transactions. One
paper, which I wrote to Mr. Kinnersley, on the sameness of lightning with
electricity, I sent to Mr. Mitchel, an acquaintance of mine, and one of the
members also of that society, who wrote me word that it had been read, but was
laughed at by the connoisseurs. The papers, however, being shown to Dr.
Fothergill, he thought them of too much value to be stifled, and advised the
printing of them. Mr. Collinson then gave them to Cave for publication in his
Gentleman's Magazine, but he chose to print them separately in a pamphlet, and
Dr. Fothergill wrote the preface. Cave, it seemed, judged rightly for his
profession, for by the additions that arrived afterward they swelled to a
quarto volume, which has had five editions and cost him nothing for
copy-money.
Illustrations of devices used in his experiments with electricity were printed on the end sheet opposite the title page in the pamphlet published. Franklin was honored by the Royal Society of London with the Copley Medal for his experiments in electricity. The results of Franklin’s experiments led to the invention of the lightning rod which protects buildings and ships from lightning.
Printing press supposed to have been used by Ben Franklin in 1725-26
http://explorepahistory.com/displayimage.php?imgId=1-2-1ED5picture
Bibliography
Bibliography
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