Thomas-François Dalibard (; born in Crannes-en-Champagne,

France France, officially the French Republic, is a country located primarily in Western Europe. Overseas France, Its overseas regions and territories include French Guiana in South America, Saint Pierre and Miquelon in the Atlantic Ocean#North Atlan ...

in 1709, died in 1778) was a French physicist who performed the first lightning rod experiment. He was married to the novelist and playwright Françoise-Thérèse Aumerle de Saint-Phalier.

Relationship with Benjamin Franklin

He first met the American

scientist A scientist is a person who Scientific method, researches to advance knowledge in an Branches of science, area of the natural sciences. In classical antiquity, there was no real ancient analog of a modern scientist. Instead, philosophers engag ...

Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin (April 17, 1790) was an American polymath: a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher and Political philosophy, political philosopher.#britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Wood, 2021 Among the m ...

in 1767 during one of Franklin's visits to

and it is said that they became friends. In 1750,

published a proposal for an experiment to determine if

lightning Lightning is a natural phenomenon consisting of electrostatic discharges occurring through the atmosphere between two electrically charged regions. One or both regions are within the atmosphere, with the second region sometimes occurring on ...

was

electricity Electricity is the set of physical phenomena associated with the presence and motion of matter possessing an electric charge. Electricity is related to magnetism, both being part of the phenomenon of electromagnetism, as described by Maxwel ...

. He proposed extending a conductor into a cloud that appeared to have the potential to become a

thunderstorm A thunderstorm, also known as an electrical storm or a lightning storm, is a storm characterized by the presence of lightning and its acoustics, acoustic effect on the Earth's atmosphere, known as thunder. Relatively weak thunderstorm ...

. If electricity existed in the cloud, the conductor could be used to extract it.

Experiments with electricity

Dalibard, who at the suggestion of

Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon (; 7 September 1707 – 16 April 1788) was a French Natural history, naturalist, mathematician, and cosmology, cosmologist. He held the position of ''intendant'' (director) at the ''Jardin du Roi'', now ca ...

, translated Franklin's ''Experiments and Observations on Electricity'' into French, performed Franklin's proposed experiment using a 40-foot-tall metal rod at Marly-la-Ville on 10 May 1752. It is said that Dalibard used wine bottles to ground the pole, and he successfully extracted electricity from a low cloud. It is not known whether Franklin ever performed his proposed experiment.

Publications

Dalibard was the author of ''Florae Parisiensis Prodromus, ou catalogue des plantes qui naissent dans les environs de Paris'' (Florae Parisiensis Prodromus, or Catalogue of Plants Native to the Area around Paris) (Paris, 1749).

Relationship with Benjamin Franklin

Experiments with electricity

Publications

References

Further reading