Thomas-François Dalibard

Thomas-François Dalibard (born in Crannes-en-Champagne, France in 1709, died in 1778) was a French physicist.[1]

Relationship with Ben Franklin

He first met U.S. scientist Benjamin Franklin in 1767[2] during one of Franklin's visits to France and it is said that they became friends.

In 1750, Benjamin Franklin published a proposal for an experiment to determine if lightning was electricity. He proposed extending a conductor into a cloud that appeared to have the potential to become a 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, 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.[3][4]

Publications

Dalibard was the author of Florae Parisiensis Prodromus, ou catalogue des plantes qui naissent dans les environs de Paris (Florae Parisiensis Prodromus, or catalog of plants native to the area around Paris) (Paris, 1749).

gollark: That seems basically in accordance with the bodily autonomy thing.
gollark: If you're going to say "you technically can do whatever you want with your own body, but we're going to practically ban large classes of things" then that can absolutely generalize to abortion or anything else.
gollark: I assumed you meant "bodily autonomy", i.e. you own your body and get to decide what happens to it, based on you saying something about thinking the average person should support ownership of their own body.
gollark: "Ownership of your body ≠ Ownership of abortion drugs or the right to have a doctor do abortions."
gollark: That could equally apply to abortions though!

References
  1. A letter written by his widow
  2. http://www.franklinpapers.org/franklin/framedVolumes.jsp
  3. "Lightning! | Museum of Science, Boston".
  4. Tucker, Tom (2003). Bolt of Fate: Benjamin Franklin and His Electric Kite Hoax. ISBN 1891620703.

Further reading

Hamamdjian, Pierre G. (1970–1980). "Dalibard, Thomas François". Dictionary of Scientific Biography. 3. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons. p. 535. ISBN 978-0-684-10114-9.


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