Excerpt: ...actually began one. But on considering that any one might repeat his experiments, and ascertain for himself whether or not they were true, he concluded to let his papers shift for themselves; believing it was better to spend what time he could spare in making new experiments than in disputing about those already made. 16. The event gave him no cause to repent of his silence. His friend, Monsieur Le Roy, of the Royal Academy of Sciences, took up his cause, and refuted the abbe. Franklin's volume was translated ...
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Excerpt: ...actually began one. But on considering that any one might repeat his experiments, and ascertain for himself whether or not they were true, he concluded to let his papers shift for themselves; believing it was better to spend what time he could spare in making new experiments than in disputing about those already made. 16. The event gave him no cause to repent of his silence. His friend, Monsieur Le Roy, of the Royal Academy of Sciences, took up his cause, and refuted the abbe. Franklin's volume was translated into the Italian, German and Latin languages; and the doctrine it contained was, by degrees, generally adopted by the philosophers of Europe, in preference to that of Nollet. 17. What gave his book the more sudden and general celebrity was the success of one of its proposed experiments, made at Marly, for drawing lightning from the clouds. This engaged the public attention every where. The "Philadelphia experiments," as they were called, were performed before the king and court, and all the curious of Paris flocked to see them. 18. Dr. Wright, an English physician, was at Paris when they were the talk and wonder of the day. He wrote to a member of the Royal Society an account of the high esteem in which the experiments of Franklin were held by learned men abroad and of their surprise that his writings had been so little noticed in England. The society, on this, resumed the consideration of the letters that had been read to them, and a summary account of their doctrines was drawn up and published among their philosophical essays and transactions. 19. To make Franklin some amends for the slight with which they had before treated him, the society chose him a member, without his having made the usual application. They also presented him with the gold medal of Sir Godfrey Copley for the year 1753, the delivery of which was accompanied by a very complimentary speech from the president, Lord Macclesfield. 1. When did Franklin first attend to...
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