Indy welcomes Brother Buck - The Monday Morning Memo

“Ben Franklin was the world’s most famous scientist in his day. But he’s not remembered in America as that; he’s remembered as a founding father.

He invents the lightning rod. What’s the tallest structure back then? The steeple makes the church the tallest structure in any city. What is the most susceptible to a lightning strike? The tallest structure. So lightning was taking out churches left and right, and if you were the other church that wasn’t taken out, you had good argument for saying the people in the church that burned down were worshiping in the wrong way.

Ben Franklin then invents the lightning rod, which does two things: It dissipates charges that build up under your structure that would otherwise be part of the lightning strike, and it sends them back into the air without the benefit of lightning. So that makes you less susceptible to begin with. And if the lightning strikes it, then it directs all of the charge through the metal and not through your house.

So Ben Franklin does this, and churches are no longer destroyed by lightning, even if they’re hit, and he’s accused of heresy for thwarting the will of God.”

- Neil deGrasse Tyson

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