Benjamin Franklin firmly believed that electricity and lightning had close similarities.
One of his inventions was the lightning rod, a simple rod attached to the top of a building. The rod was meant to protect houses from the destructive forces of lightning. As the electric charge from lightning strikes the rod, it would conduct the charge harmlessly into the ground, saving the house and its occupants.
Franklin made a description of this invention in 1753. He is also credited to have coined terms like battery, conductor, electric shock etc.
It is believed that Franklin began his experiments on electricity in 1746. Two years later, he created a multiple plate capacitor which he called an electrical battery. The capacitors were wired together sequentially to store more charge than one alone could. This helped to produce a bigger discharge of static electricity. For his contributions to the study of electricity, Benjamin Franklin received the Royal Society’s Copley Medal in 1753.
