ABSTRACT
Benjamin Franklin's work on electricity was epochal. He invented the concepts of positive and negative electricity, and the associated idea of electrical charge, and he did this in connection with exemplary experiments. The idea of electrical charges and their equilibration in discharge set the stage for Franklin's later identification, in the 1750s, of lightning with electrical discharge of just the sort seen in experimental set-ups. This balancing of the electrical books played a central role in his grand theorising about electricity, the atmosphere, and the earth as part of a system governing global meteorological phenomena. The authors had for some time been of opinion, that the electrical fire was not created by friction, but collected, being really an element diffused among, and attracted by other matter, particularly by water and metals. They had even discovered and demonstrated its afflux to the electrical sphere, as well as its efflux.
