In Europe, the lightning rod was invented by a theologian and natural scientist, Václav Prokop Diviš, between 1750 and 1754. He is the inventor of the first grounded lightning rod, which he erected on 15 July 1754 in the garden of his home in Přímětice u Znojma. It consisted of 400 sharp metal spikes attached at the top of a 42 m tall supporting pylon. The structure was fastened by three metal chains, conductively attached to the iron grounding cones buried in the packed down soil. He described his 'weather machine' in the treatise 'Descriptio machinae meteorologicae'. The original idea was to continually sap the electricity out of the clouds and so actually "prevent" the lightning and the storms, only in case this failed, the machine should have also been able to directly attract the lighting and channel it to the ground. He proposed his machine to be used on church towers and ships. He was sending his observations regarding the machine operation to Jan Antonín Scrinci, the physics professor at the Charles University in Prague, who published them in 'Prager Postzeitungen', 'Brünner Intelligenz-Zettel' and in 'Stuttgartisches Journal'. The machine is also mentioned by Leonhard Euler in 'Lettres à une Princesse d' Allemagne'. In 1755 Diviš asked the Emperor Ferdinand I of Austria to let him build more machines on several places for the welfare of the people. The emperor let the mathematicians in Vienna judge the proposal, but they refused it. Abbé Marci, court mathematician and Diviš' friend commented: 'Blasphemant, quae ignorant' (condemning what they do not know). In 1756 the machine was damaged by wind and then rebuilt, and then on 10 March 1760, angry villagers of Přímětice tore down the structure, blaming Diviš for drought which struck the region that year. Later in the year, after the summer during which the thunderstorms did a lot of damage to the fields and vineyards, the people besought him to rebuild the machine, which he did in the precinct of Loucky monastery, and built another one on the top of the church tower in Přímětice.
In the United States, the pointed lightning rod conductor, often incorrectly referred to as the "lightning attractor," was invented by Benjamin Franklin as part of his groundbreaking explorations of electricity. Franklin thought that, with an iron rod sharpened to a point at the end,
""The electrical fire would, I think, be drawn out of a cloud silently, before it could come near enough to strike [...].""
Franklin speculated about lightning rods for several years before his reported kite experiment. This experiment, in fact, took place because he was tired of waiting for Christ Church in Philadelphia to be completed so he could place a lightning rod on top of it. There was some resistance from churches who felt that it was defying divine will to install these rods. Franklin countered that there is no religious objection to roofs on buildings to resist precipitation, so lightning, which he proved to be simply a giant electrical spark, should be no different. As an act of philanthropy, Franklin decided against patenting the invention.
In the 19th century the lightning rod became a symbol of American ingenuity and a decorative motif. Lightning rods were often embellished with ornamental glass balls (now prized by collectors). The ornamental appeal of these glass balls has also been incorporated into weather vanes.
Balls of solid glass occasionally were used in a method thought to prevent lightning strikes to ships. It is worth noting here not because it worked, which it did not, but because it reveals a lot about pre-scientific thought. Glass objects do not conduct electricity well. They are seldom struck by lightning. Therefore, goes the theory, there must be something about glass that repels lightning. Hence the best method for preventing a lightning strike to a wooden ship was to bury a small solid glass ball in the tip of the highest mast. The random behavior of lightning ensured that the method gained a good bit of credence even after the development of the marine lightning rod soon after Franklin's initial work.
Nikola Tesla's was an improvement in lightning protectors. The patent was granted due to a fault in Franklin's original theory of operation; the pointed lightning rod actually ionizes the air around itself. This makes the air conductive, which in turn raises the probability of a strike. Many years after receiving his patent, in 1919 Dr. Tesla wrote an article for The Electrical Experimenter entitled "Famous Scientific Illusions", in which he explains the logic of Franklin's pointed lightning rod and discloses his improved method and apparatus.
Ashland, Alabama
Ashland is an American city in the state of Alabama. It is the county seat of Clay County. The city has a population of about 2,000 people. Ashland is the hometown of Alabama's 52nd governor Bob Riley. Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black is from Ashland.
Ashland has an area of 7.2 miles. The city is Alabama's highest elevated county seat at 1130 feet.
Bob Riley
Robert Renfroe "Bob" Riley (born October 3, 1944) is an American politician. He is a member of the Republican party. He was the 52nd Governor of Alabama from 2003 until 2011. He was first elected to office in 2002 and re-elected in 2006. Riley was born in Ashland.
He has a wife, four children (one is dead), and seven grandchildren.
Leon Czolgosz
Leon Czolgosz (May 5, 1873 - October 29, 1901) was an American assassin and an anarchist best known as the murderer of William McKinley. He was born in Alpena, Michigan to Polish Catholic immigrant parents. Czolgosz shot President William McKinley in Buffalo, New York on 6 September 1901. The President died from his injury on September 14, 1901, 8 days later. Czolgosz shot the president because he believed the President committed war crimes in the American Philippines war (1899-1913) and was an enemy of the people. He was influenced by Emma Goldman. Some people have questioned the sanity of Czolgosz.
Czolgosz was found guilty of murder in a very fast trial. He was executed by electric chair in Auburn prison, New York on October 29, 1901.
Federal district
The federal district is the area around the national capital in some federal countries. that are organized as
capital districts and territories.
A federal district is made so that no state in the country can claim to be more important than the others because the national capital is inside the state, or to stop one state trying to have control over the national capital.
Countries with a federal district include:
Belgium is a federal country, but its capital (Brussels) is not a federal district, but is its own language region. To show that the French language and the Flemish language are equal Brussels is a special bilingual (two-languages) region.
Baldwin County, Alabama
Baldwin County is a county in the U.S. state of Alabama.
It is named in honor of Abraham Baldwin, a member of the United States Senate from Georgia who never actually lived in Alabama. In 2000 the population was 140,415. The estimated 2005 population from the U.S. Census Bureau is 162,586. The county seat (capital city) is Bay Minette.
Baldwin County was made on December 21, 1809 ten years before Alabama became a state. Before this, the county had been a part of the Mississippi Territory until 1817 when the area passed into the Alabama territory
The borders of the county has often changed, and many armies have invaded.