A Shocking Omission

[beamjockey]

I've just conceived a desire to look at Benjamin Franklin's Experiments and Observations on Electricity, which you'd think would be on the Web someplace, being in the public domain and all. But I can't find a copy.

(Ben's tercentenary is coming up, which reminds me that I've never read his Autobiography, and I really should before 17 January 2006, don't you think? That book, at least, is available from Project Gutenberg.)

Comments

[guyfie.livejournal.com]

http://dbhs.wvusd.k12.ca.us/webdocs/Chem-History/Franklin-1749/Franklin-1749-Start.html

[gypsy1969.livejournal.com]

Wow, the parent site is a great link. Thanks.

[beamjockey.livejournal.com]

Well, guyfie, that site is very nice, but it reprints only one of the letters, in facsimile. The entire book ought to be on-line.

It would also be nice to read an edition rendered into modern typography, if possible; the old-fashioned "s" slows me down, as, to a lesser extent, do the other weird ligatures. To the modern eye, Franklin's prose looks like this:

"An electrified bumper is a fmall thin glafs tumbler, near filled with wine, and electrified as the bottle. This when brought to the lips gives a fhock, if the party be clofe fhaved, and does not breathe on the liquor."

(Whoopee!) This perhaps does not pose a problem to all you seasoned re-enactors, who presumably spend a lot of your time in the Eighteenth, or earlier, centuries.

I wonder if OCR software has 18th-century plug-ins?

P.S. See further ruminations on Franklin in liveavatar's journal. I love the idea of their annual Regency Science Fair.