When did Benjamin Franklin supposedly perform his kite experiment?
Kite experiment
Speculations of Jean-Antoine Nollet had led to the issue of the electrical nature of lightning being posed as a prize question at Bordeaux in 1749. In 1750, it was the subject of public discussion in France, with a dissertation of Denis Barberet receiving a prize in Bordeaux; Barberet proposed a cause in line with the triboelectric effect. The same year, Franklin reversed his previous skepticism of electrical lightning's attraction to high points.[1] The physicist Jacques de Romas also wrote a mémoire with similar ideas that year, and later defended them as independent of Franklin's.[2]