With that liberality which distinguishes all truly great minds, Benjamin Franklin did not keep his great discoveries to himself, but communicated them to others in the most open-handed manner. Ever since he had commenced his electrical experiments, he had sent the detailed results of them to his London correspondent, Mr. Peter Collinson, for communication to the Royal Society, and he was not even prevented from continuing the labour of writing long letters by the knowledge of the fact that scant notice was taken of them by the Royal Society. The members of this august learned body, with a few honourable exceptions, seemed unable to hide their contempt for what they considered the dabblings in science of a mere tradesman, living in an obscure little town, in a distant colony. Somebody had mentioned in public that this person, of the name of Franklin, was a dealer in rags and goose-feathers, dwelling among money-worshipping Quakers in the City of Brotherly Love: which naturally was productive of great merriment, but detrimental to scientific respect. Thus, although by the influence of Mr. Collinson and some of his friends, the letters from Philadelphia were read before the Royal Society, they met with scarcely any attention, and the members broadly expressed their disdain of them by refusing to allow their insertion in their ‘Transactions.’ Three whole years elapsed in this way, when at length, in the autumn of 1750, Benjamin Franklin reported to Mr. Collinson his researches on the identity of electricity and lightning, together with his ideas that all damage done by the electric fire descending from the clouds upon the earth might be put a stop to by fixing iron rods, with sharp points, to the summit of buildings, which would thus be protected. He added that he himself intended shortly to verify his conclusions by experiments, but that, in the meanwhile, it would be well if others did the same. Never before, perhaps, was a grand idea thrown out to all the world with more munificence of spirit, and with more entire abnegation of the very thought of self.
Franklin’s letter made a great impression upon Mr. Collinson. Anxious to make it public, while persuaded that the Royal Society would give no better reception to it than to the author’s previous communications, he hastened to Mr. Edward Cave, proprietor and editor of the ‘Gentleman’s Magazine,’ and asked him to print it in his publication, the most widely read at the time. A man of quick sense, Mr. Cave, too, saw at once the vast importance of Franklin’s paper, describing his discovery, and readily offered to print it, but recommended that it should be done in pamphlet form, as likely to make the facts even more extensively known than could be the case in his own Magazine. This having been agreed to, there appeared, early in May 1751, a pamphlet with the name of Benjamin Franklin on the front page, and a preface by Dr. Fothergill, entitled, ‘New Experiments and Observations in Electricity, made at Philadelphia, in America.’ It was the most important contribution to science published since the appearance, five-and-thirty years before, of Newton’s ‘Principia.’