Most of us know - at least we've heard - that Benjamin Franklin conducted some kind of electrical experiment with a kite. What few of us realize - and what this book makes clear - is that Franklin played a major role in laying the foundations of modern electrical science and technology. This book, rich with historical details and anecdotes, brings to life Franklin, the large international network of scientists and inventors in which he played a key role, and their amazing inventions. We learn what these early electrical devices - from lights and motors to musical and medical instruments - looked like, how they worked, and what their utilitarian and symbolic meanings were for those who invented and used them. Against the fascinating panorama of life in the eighteenth century, Michael Brian Schiffer tells the story of the very beginnings of our modern electrical world.