Bolt of Fate: Benjamin Franklin and His Fabulous Kite
Автор:Tom Tucker Год: 2005 Издание: [не указанo] Страниц: 297 ISBN: 1586482947 Book DescriptionNow in paperback: "This is Franklin unmasked" ( The New Yorker ) Benjamin Franklin flying his electric kite is one of the most celebrated images of any Founding Father's life. Yet, as Tom Tucker argues convincingly in Bolt of Fate , the kite may never have existed and that, oddly enough, its absence tells us more about Franklin than its presence might. Franklin was an enthusiastic and capable hoaxer-regularly running stories from fabricated personalities in his own periodicals. He was also sly, witty, and used to outthinking the competition. He knew that a scientific feat of this magnitude would propel him to the front of the era's international, intensely competitive scientific community. The Franklin that his experimentpresented to the world-a homespun, rural philosopher-scientist performing an immensely important and dangerous experiment with a child's toy-became the Franklin of myth. In fact, this presentation on Franklin's part so charmed the...
