But to whom then is the glory of this discovery due? This is a difficult point to decide. As early as 1746, that is, six years before Franklin's kite made its ascent in Philadelphia, Professor Winkler of Leipzig had asserted in a dissertation that the two phenomena were identical, and had proved this theoretically; and three years earlier still Abbé Nollet had declared the storm clouds to be the conductors of an electrical induction machine. Almost simultaneously with Franklin, Dalibard, Delor, Buffon, Le Monnier, Canton, Bevis, and Wilson made experiments on an elaborate scale, which far exceeded that of Franklin in their results. To this must be added that the experiment was conducted with evident success only in 1753, when de Romas of Nerac in South France wove a real conductor of thin annealed wire into the kite-string, and succeeded in bringing down a regular thunderstorm with flashes of lightning ten feet long, accompanied by a deafening uproar. It was only then that the track of the inspiration was traced back through time to the Roman Kings, Numa Pompilius and Tullus Hostilius, as the first experimenters with lightning. And then the physicist Lichtenberg sought to furnish a proof that the old Hebrew ark of the Covenant, together with the tabernacle, were nothing other than great pieces of electrical apparatus highly charged with electricity derived from the air; thus the first intuition, and the priority of discovery, would have to be ascribed to Moses or Aaron! And connected with this was the fact, supported by substantial proof, that the Temple of Solomon was protected by lightning-conductors. I must not omit to mention that Einstein regards this whole chain of proofs stretching back to early times as by no means established, although besides Lichtenberg, other important scholars, such as Bendavid in Berlin and Michaelis in Göttingen, have vouched for their truth. And as it is a matter of electrical relationships, Einstein's doubts cannot be passed over. As far as I recollect, they were not directed against the rough facts in themselves, but against the sense that is construed into them--that is to say, in the case of both the ancient Roman and the Biblical data, the conception of discovery must be excluded, and must be awarded rather to those intellectual efforts which have led to the creation of a method of thought. None the less, we may uphold our statement that in this case, presumed to be classical, neither Franklin nor anyone else is to be claimed as the discoverer or as the central figure in a creative act.