Lightning-conductors

Abstract

“WHO would have thought that man would succeed in drawing off the lightning and conducting it to an outlet?” The quotation is taken from one of a series of small octavo volumes, written certainly by one intimately acquainted with his subject, and published anonymously in Amsterdam in 1782–3 under the title “Tableau de Paris”. The date, which is within about ten years of the “Terror”, seemed to promise matter of interest to the student of the French Revolution; and the expectation proved to be amply justified. While the work necessarily contains much that is a sinister omen of approaching catastrophe, it also covers a wide and diversified field of contemporary life and thought; and, in particular, it contains many evidences that a very fine spirit of experimental and speculative research was awake in the France of that period. Each tableau has a short chapter to itself, the above quotation being taken from one headed “Para-tonnerre”. The author's satisfaction with the new discovery would perhaps have been considerably tempered had he known that nearly a hundred and fifty years later the solution of the problem of defence against lightning would be recognised as still far from complete; that the control of the thunder-bolt would furnish cause for anxious study to the scientists of the twentieth century.