Signedunsigned
Inscribedon steeple: 6-6-7
on steeple: 6-6
on each part, stamped: 5
FunctionDemonstration with electrostatic machine. More dramatic than the experiment done with the profile gambrel-roof house (# 0017). A spark striking the lightning rod when the circuit was incomplete caused the obelisk to topple off its pedestal.
A video demonstration of a thunder steeple by the Fondazione Scienza e Tecnica in Florence is available on Youtube here.
Historical AttributesThe Harvard College authorities took the business of lightning rods seriously in and out of class. In August 1768 the members of the Corporation voted "that pointed rods be fixed on the West end of Massachusetts Hall, & on the North end of Hollis, & that Mr. Winthrop be desired to have them prepared & put up." In 1805 Hollis Professor Samuel Webber was requested to supervise the eretion of "lightning rods or electric conductors" on Stoughton Hall, a new College building.
Primary SourcesGeorge Adams, Sr., A catalogue of optical, philosophical, and mathematical instruments, made and sold by George Adams, mathematical instrument-maker to His Majesty, at Tycho Brahe's Head, (No. 60.) Fleet-Street, London. (London, [1765]), p. 7 lists under electrical apparatus, "A thunder house / A powder house / A pyramid."
George Adams, Jr., An essay on electricity (London, 1784 and later editions), see plate 5 (steeple identical to CHSI 0018).
George Adams, Jr., Lectures on Natural and Experimental Philosophy, 5 vols (London, 1794), 5: plate II for vol. 4 (profile of house).
Published ReferencesDavid P. Wheatland, The Apparatus of Science at Harvard, 1765-1800 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968), 147.
Related WorksJohn R. Millburn, Adams of Fleet Street (Oxford: Museum of the History of Science, 2000).