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Article: Draw the Lightning Down: Benjamin Franklin and Electrical Technology in the Age of Enlightenment.(Book Review)
- Article from:
- The Historian
- Article date:
- June 22, 2005
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2005 Phi Alpha Theta, History Honor Society, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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Draw the Lightning Down: Benjamin Franklin and Electrical Technology in the Age of The Enlightenment. By Michael Brian Schiffer. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003. Pp. ix, 383. $34.95.)
Benjamin Franklin has long been recognized as one of the most remarkable men of the eighteenth century and the representative figure of the Enlightenment in the American colonies. This book confirms Franklin's place as perhaps the most important person involved in identifying electricity and establishing the study of it as a science and not merely a curiosity. Even so, the book is much more about "electrical technology" than it is about Franklin. Virtually every ...