The Birmingham age-herald., 1923-10-28
LIGHTNING ROD HAS GONE 1t Went Way Of One Horse Shay

WASHINGTON, Oct. 27.-The one time omnipresent lightning rod agent has disappeared with the dodo bird and the one-horse shay. Two de- cades ago the now almost forgotten lightning rod men were the bane of the farmers existence, for they were, if anything, more persistent than book agents.
 From the time Franklin invented the lightning rod, in 1752, until the dawn of the twentieth century the nation, the world, had an implicit faith in the ability of the apparatus to ward off the bolts of lightning, and the manufacture and sale of the rods grew into a thriving business. By 1870 no fewer than thirty factories were turning out thousands of the conductors, and the industry could be reckoned in millions. Then the busi- ness slumped, the decline becoming marked in 1905, and if there is one factory now producing lightning rods the United States census fails to make a record of it.
 The death of the lightning rod came with the re1ort of the lightn- ing research committee in 1905 which showed many failures of conductors to protect the houses from the bolts of electricity. Although the report did not discredit the efficacy of the rods as conductors, still the effect of the findings caused the public to lose faith in lightning rods. The report declared that the failures of the con ductors were caused by insufficient rods and lack of good earth connec- tions." Another contributing cause, they said, was the absence of any method for connecting the metallic portions of the building with the conductors.
 There have been frequent discus sions in scientific periodicals rela- vention of the lightning rod by Franklin. In a letter to Peter Col linson, dated July 2s, 175O, Franklin proposed to test the electricity of thunder clouds and suggested the possibility of the lightning rod. In September. 1752. it is recorded that he erected on his house an insulated pair of bells, which by ringing, would show when the rod was cleo trified. On April r, 1753. he entered a note in his journal that he had charged Leyden jar from this rod.
 A file of The Pennsylvania Gag cite for the year of 1752 shows that the lightning rod was in use at the time Franklin made his famous cleo trical kite experiment.. This same year he outlined directions for erec- ting lightning rods and published them the following year in Poor Richards Almanac. The directions. with the heading, follow:
 How To Secure Houses, t&c., From
 Lightning
 "It has pleased God in His good ness to mankind at length to dis cover to them the means of securing their habitations and other buildings from mischief by thunder and light ming. The method is this: Provide small iron rod Git may be made of the rod-iron used by nailers, but of such length that, one end being three or four feet in the ground, the other may be six or eight feet above the highest part of the building. To the upper end of the rod fasten about a foot of brass wire. the size of a com mon knitting needle, sharpened to a fine point, the rod may be secured to the house by few small staples. If the house or barn be long there may be rod and point at each end and a middle wire along the ridge from one to the other. A house thus fur nished will not be damaged by lightn- ine. it being attracted by the points and passing through the metal into the ground without hurting any thing. Vessels also having a sharp pointed rod fixed to the top of the rasts with a wire from the foot of the rod reaching down. round one of the shrouds to the water. will not be hurt by lightning"
 The spread of the lightning rod over Amerlca and Europe must have been exceedingly rapid. for two years after Franklin placed his conductor on his house at Philadelphia and charged the Leyden jar. France had taken up the invention. It was in 1753 that Franklin heard of the suc- cess of an experiment. by two French men who succeeded in bringing elec- tricity from the clouds by a system of metal rods.
 Of this Franklin wrote to a friend in France in which he said:
 T was pleased to hear of the sue cess of my experiments in France and that they there are beginning to erect points on their buildings. We had before placed them on our academy and the state house spires"
 By the middle of the nineteenth century there was not a hamlet in the country in which there were ID lightning rods. In truth a majority of the buildings boasted of at leaaS TWO points" carrying an ornamental s.ass ball not far from the tip and with the twisted metal carriers run nlng off to the ground on each side of the house. In the farming sec tions the rods were still more in evidence. both the farmhouse and barns carrying them.
 Of course, in the cities the metallic roofs of the buildings and the steel framework have eleminated the