A Lightning Rod

 

This is a translation of a part of my essay from basic school about Prokop Diviš. And the original essay was made from an old famous Otta’s encyclopedia. I would like to talk about a very important invention – about the lightning rod. Only few people know that it was inventioned by a Czech inventor Prokop Diviš. A lot of people thinks that it was the Benjamin Franklin’s invention. But the truth is that both men inventioned it independently and Diviš was the first. He made his first lightning rod six years earlier than Franklin. And Diviš’s lightning rod was more sophisticated and safer than Franklin’s. First Franklin’s lightning rod was not grounded! So the big electric arcs were between the Franklin’s lightning rod and the ground... Diviš’s was much better.

 

Diviš was born in Žamberk in 1696. He was a priest and also a teacher. He liked physics and especially electricity. He was a very good experimenter. He made a lot of interesting experiments with electricity and he inventioned a lot of things. For instance, he made a pumping device, a little power station, an electric synthesizer called "Golden Diviš" and he also cured rheumatism by an electric current. But his most important ivention was the lightning rod.

 

He made his first lightning rod in 1754 next to his house in Přímětice near Znojmo. He called it "The Meteorologic Apparatus". The main feature was to remove electricity from clouds. The second (less important) feature was to conduct the lightning into the ground. The lightning rod was gigantic. It was built on the top of 39 m high wooden pole. It consisted of two crossed iron rods, 3 m long. In the middle of each four sides was another iron rod, 40 cm long.  There were twelve endings. There was a vertical rod on each ending. And on the each vertical rod was a small iron-plate box with three rows of conductive spikes. On the top of the lightning rod there was the thirteen box. And on the top of this box there were two iron-plate wings which frightened birds. The lightning rod was fixed and also grounded by large conductive chains.

 

Diviš also made a manual how to fix the lightning  rod on towers and also on boats. Diviš’s lightning rod really worked. But few years later there was only very little rain in the summer. And poor people thought that it was Diviš’s fault. They destroyed his lightning rod. He made a new one but somewhere else. He wanted to make a lot of other lightning rods but mainly because of bureaucracy he cannnot do that.

 

Diviš was very famous in scientific field. He was a friend with Euler. He was friendly, he liked teaching and his inventions were received with pleasure mainly in Germany. But he was underrated, like a lot of another inventors.