This scientist at once reported the affair to the French Academy, remarking that "Franklin's idea was no longer a conjecture, but a reality." FRANKLIN PROVES THAT LIGHTNING IS ELECTRICITY Europe, hitherto somewhat sceptical of Franklin's views, was by this time convinced of the identity of lightning and electricity.

It was now Franklin's turn to be sceptical.

To him the fact that a rod, one hundred feet high, became electrified during a storm did not necessarily prove that the storm-clouds were electrified.

A rod of that length was not really projected into the cloud, for even a very low thunder-cloud was more than a hundred feet above the ground.

Irrefutable proof could only be had, as he saw it, by "extracting" the lightning with something actually sent up into the storm-cloud; and to accomplish this Franklin made his silk kite, with which he finally demonstrated to his own and the world's satisfaction that his theory was correct.
Taking his kite out into an open common on the approach of a thunder-storm, he flew it well up into the threatening clouds, and then, touching, the suspended key with his knuckle, received the electric spark; and a little later he charged a Leyden jar from the electricity drawn from the clouds with his kite.
In a brief but direct letter, he sent an account of his kite and his experiment to England: "Make a small cross of two light strips of cedar," he wrote, "the arms so long as to reach to the four corners of a large, thin, silk handkerchief when extended; tie the corners of the handkerchief to the extremities of the cross so you have the body of a kite; which being properly accommodated with a tail, loop, and string, will rise in the air like those made of paper; but this being of silk is fitter to bear the wind and wet of a thunder-gust without tearing.