Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 146, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 June 1919 — FRANKLIN’S KITE EXPERIMENT [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

FRANKLIN’S KITE EXPERIMENT

How the Patriot's Thrift and Savings Habits Gave All the Value to His Study of Lightning. BESIDES being a good printer, a great statesman and an immortal economist Benjamin Franklin was a scientist of the highest rank. His famous kite experiment, by which he first proved the identity ol atmospheric electricity and *the static kind generated by rubbing ambef with silk, would have beeh futile and valueless but for one little “kink” that Ben Franklin thought of simply because he had made a fixed habit of saving. He

felt sure that the lightning was only an electric manifestation; but in order to prove It, he knew that he must save some of the current he cau&hfe, on fils kite string. . To save some of It fie attached a common Leyden jar—or tinfoil “condenser” —to the kit string. That enabled him to save enough of the current snatched from the clouds for a deceive test. If he had not thought of saving a little, hks experiment would have been only a dangerous and addlepated caper. Saving made It great and famous. ’ The money you earn is soon lostjust like the electricity in the clouds —unless you follow Ben Frapklin’s example and provide a sort of Leyden jar or “condenser” to save part of it. WAR SAVINGS CERTIFICATES and THRIFT STAMPS will serve for your earnings the same useful purpose that Ben bottle and tinfoil served in his kite experiment. If science demands saving how mnch more does living require it. Remember Ben Franklin’s kite and buy WAR SAVINGS STAMPS.