Lightning-conductors

"WHO would have thought that man would succeed in drawing off the lightning and conducting it to an outlet?" The quotation is taken from one of a series of small octavo volumes, written certainly by one intimately acquainted with his subject, and published anonymously in Amsterdam in 1782-3 under the title "Tableau de Paris". The date, which is within about ten years of the "Terror", seemed to promise matter of interest to the student of the French Revolution; and the expectation proved to be amply justified. While the work necessarily contains much that is a sinister omen of approaching catastrophe, it also covers a wide and diversified field of contemporary life and thought; and, in particular, it contains many evidences that a very fine spirit of experimental and speculative research was awake in the France of that period. Each tableau has a short chapter to itself, the above quotation being taken from one headed "Para-tonnerre". The author's satisfaction with the new discovery would perhaps have been considerably tempered had he known that nearly a hundred and fifty years later the solution of the problem of defence against lightning would be recognised as still far from complete; that the control of the thunder-bolt would furnish cause for anxious study to the scientists of the twentieth century.