Benjamin Franklin's contributions to the science of electrostatics were basic, but incredibly important. A couple of things about Franklin's experiments that may capture your interest:

• He began by using a glass tube, rubbing it with a piece of buckskin. He used this to charge Leyden jars and do other observations on the nature of electricity. So when we rub a piece of PVC tubing with fur, wool, or chamois, we are really repeating an historical experiment using modern materials.
•  His discoveries about how Leyden jars work led him to believe (correctly) that a flat piece of glass would work just as well as a glass container to make a capacitor. His contemporaries called the flat capacitors "Franklin squares". For us this means many available plastics, with foil glued to each side, can become quick capacitors. The flat clear part of a CD case, a dismantled floppy disk, freezer bags, and visqueen are all candidates to become capacitors with the help of a little rubber cement and foil.

Contained in the first volume of Michael Faraday's Experimental Researches in Electricity is a description of the disc type static electricity machine he used:

"(paragraph)290. The plate electrical machine I have used is fifty inches in diameter; it has two sets of rubbers; its prime conductor consists of two brass cylinders connected by a third, the whole length being twelve feet, and the surface in contact with the air about 1422 square inches. When in good excitation, one revolution of the plate will give ten or twelve sparks from the conductors, each an inch in length. Sparks or flashes from ten to fourteen inches in length may easily be drawn from the conductors."

I look forward to the day when my frictional machines throw a spark ten to fourteen inches!

We should be thankful for Faraday's discovery that moving a magnet inside a coil creates an electric current. This indebts us to him for anything that uses a dynamo, electric motor, generator, alternator, etc. In other words, he made electricity "useful" in the sense of performing physical work. He also discovered a relationship between electricity and chemistry that profoundly changed the world.  Quite a guy.

A source tells me that the best book on the history of  the frictional electric machine is:
W. D. Hackmann, "Electricity from Glass, The history of the frictional electrical
machine, 1600-1850," Sijthoff & Noordhoff, The Netherlands, 1978. Discusses in great
historical detail the development of the frictional machine and its use in the early studies about electricity.
 
 
 

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