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I flew the kite in June 1752, during a thunderstorm. The kite had a pointed wire at the top. A hemp string connected to a silk string, held in the hand. A Leyden jar attached at the junction to collect any charge. A key on the hemp string.

When lightning struck near the kite — not the kite directly, that would have killed me — charge ran down the wet hemp string and collected in the jar. I touched the key and felt the shock. Lightning was electrical discharge. The same phenomenon I had produced in my parlour with a Leyden jar and a glass rod was occurring on a planetary scale above me.

From this came the lightning rod: a pointed conductor at the top of a building, connected by wire to the ground. The charge runs down the wire rather than through the building. Churches stopped burning. Ships stopped exploding. The British adopted blunt conductors because the Royal Society said they were better; Americans used pointed ones because I said they were better. This disagreement, I believe, says something about the two countries.

I was forty-six years old. I had been doing electrical experiments for a decade.