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Benjamin Franklin, Electricity and Slumdog Millionaire

Written by Carl Packman
Monday, 30 March 2009 00:00

There was hardly a thing not achieved by Benjamin Franklin in his lifetime: political theorist, scientist, inventor, statesman and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States of America. He was also very well known for his discoveries in electricity. For example, he concluded that “vitreous” and “resinous” electricity were not different, but rather positive and negative, respectively.

Due to the scorn with which he poured on Christianity in his writings, critics denounced him as an atheist. This was not the case; in fact, Franklin was an avowed Deist, though to be a Deist at that time was as good as being an atheist. Rev. George Whitefield, who Franklin was in correspondence with, thought there no difference in the two, implying in his journal that a Deist is to an atheist what chalk is to charcoal.

Franklin’s biographer, James Parton, explained that Franklin’s God was a humane conception of Deism, and that “[h]e escaped the theology of terror, and became forever incapable of worshipping a jealous, revengeful, and vindictive God” (Parton, Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin, p. 71). But it is precisely this benevolence, this impotence of a God who doesn’t stop disease that many people despair. For example, Christopher Hitchens, who has gained his reputation of late as an atheist with a bite, admits that he identifies himself less as an atheist and more as an anti-theist. What concerns him more is not the existence of God, but that if God does exist, then he really doesn’t like anyone. He didn’t step in while Jews where being gassed in the chambers in Auschwitz, for example. If there is a God, attests Hitchens, he is not to like.

 

The book that details this is his 2006 work God is not Great which appeared alongside other similar treatments of religion like Sam Harris’ The End of Faith and Richard Dawkins’ bestseller The God Delusion. In his book, Hitchens mentions Franklin and the work that Franklin undertook which led to the invention of the lightning rod, and the reaction it gained among some that it was a device with which to anger God. Hitchens uses these reactions to show what would happen if the superstitious had had their way with the regulation of scientific pursuit, whether society today would be as advanced as it is.

Franklin, in 1750, published a proposal for an experiment to show that lightning is electricity. His proposal included a demonstration with a kite during a storm (which, unfortunately, was to mark the end of one or two naïve scientists). On 10 May, 1752, Thomas François Dalibard of France conducted the experiment with tall iron rods. Lo, it extracted electrical sparks from a cloud and led to the invention of the lightning rod. In that same year Franklin noticed that the rods could be used to protect buildings and indeed, after some experiments on Franklin’s own house, lightning rods were installed on the Academy of Philadelphia (later to become the University of Pennsylvania) and the Pennsylvania State House (later Independence Hall).

Franklin, in one of his yearly almanacs, noted that in showing “[h]ow to secure houses etc. from lightning…it has pleased God in his goodness to mankind, at length to discover to them the means of securing their habitations and other buildings from mischief by thunder and lightning.” But this was not enough to curb worries of the superstitious. In 1753, Dr. John Lining repeated Franklin’s experiment in South Carolina, but locals objected to his plans on the grounds that the rod was too “presumptuous”, in that it would interfere with the will of God and that it would attract lightning. Franklin replied to the protesters and, in particular, Jean-Antoine Nollet the leading electrical experimenter in France and a strong opponent of protective rods:

“…He [Nollet] speaks as if he thought it presumption in man to propose guarding himself against Thunders of Heaven! Surely the thunder of heaven is no more supernatural than the rain, hail, or sunshine of heaven, against the inconvenience of which we guard by roofs and shades without scruple. But I can now ease the gentleman of this apprehension; for by some late experiments I find, that it is not lightning from the clouds that strikes the earth, but lightning from the earth that strikes the clouds.”

So in knowing Franklin’s involvement in the public acknowledgement of electricity, irony was not lost on me when I watched Danny Boyle’s award-winning film Slumdog Millionaire, in which we see the life of Jamal Malik played out alongside the filming of the Indian version of “Who Wants to be a Millionaire” on which Jamal is a contestant. The answer to each question asked of Jamal has a story of his past attached to it, and his great wealth of knowledge (as well as the prejudice attached to being an Indian Muslim growing up in a city slum) leads the host of the programme to suspect Jamal of cheating in some way. Jamal is interrogated by the police who ask him to justify his knowledge of the answers to them (which provides the film with its main narrative – the childhood and early adulthood of Jamal, his brother and Latika, the girl who Jamal falls in love with and whom he searches for in his older years. It is also this search that tempts Jamal into being a contestant on the game show).

One of the questions asked of Jamal on the show is to identify who appears on the back of a $100 bill (followed by the sarcastic remark: Do you see many $100 bills as a chai-wallah?” – a tea waiter which relates to Jamal’s job as an assistant in a call centre). Before answering, Jamal recollects a story of his past when he would have encountered a $100 bill. In being mistaken for a tour guide at the Taj Mahal and realising the financial benefits of such a job, he gives an American couple a factually inaccurate tour of the site. All the while, Jamal is aware that the couple’s car is being robbed. When Jamal, the couple and their driver (who is in on it) get back to the car to see the work of the thieves, the driver gives Jamal a slap round the ear. The couple, in a panic, give Jamal some American bills. Later on, Jamal gives the bill to a young, blind street beggar. He identifies the currency (somehow) but asks that Jamal describe the person on the back of the bill to determine its amount. Jamal describes his features and the blind boy recognises him as Benjamin Franklin. When the picture cuts back to the police interrogation, the sarcasm of Jamal (or, due to how unbelievable the story is) makes the police chief very angry, and he threatens Jamal with the electric rod he had previously allowed his assistant to prod him with in order to get Jamal to admit he’d cheated on the game show at the start of the film. The story of how Jamal came to know who Franklin was met with the threat to injure Jamal with an item Franklin had some part in inventing.

At the end of the film, Jamal’s brother Salim exclaims that God is great (“Allah akbar”) for the suspicion he has that God was watching over Jamal and Latika, and that they find each other in order for protection. Franklin also suspected God of being good when he allowed mankind to find electric rods to secure their “habitations and other buildings from mischief by thunder and lightning.” How modest both men were.