Verner Column: Uncle Jim and the lightning jars

During a recent lightning storm I thought of my college friend Bob and his would-be inventor uncle, Jim. As I said in the story of Uncle Jim and his homemade submarine, we never knew whether to believe
Bob or not. But he told good stories.

Uncle Jim was always eager to save money, and he often thought he could do so by the right invention. He especially admired Benjamin Franklin and his inventions and considered himself the modern-
day incarnation of Franklin. “You know,” Bob reported he said to Aunt Dot one day, “I believe that I am the modern-day incarnation of Benjamin Franklin.”

Dot looked at him for a while. “It’s more like you’re the modern-day incarnation of an old fool,” she said. But Uncle Jim didn’t let that slow him down. He went right on trying to invent things.

One evening, Bob said, Uncle Jim was reading a biography of Benjamin Franklin, and came to the part about Leyden jars. He said to Bob, “You know, I could store electricity in jars like that and save on
electricity.” He went on to describe the jars and how they worked. He had connected the jars with Franklin’s kite experiment and concluded that he could harvest lightning, store it in the jars and use it on
the farm. “All we need,” he said, “is some foil, some metal rods and some glass jars.”

From the kitchen Aunt Dot shouted, “You’re not using my pickle jars!” That didn’t stop Jim. He and Bob were off to the local co-op where they bought some long metal rods and about fifty pickle jars. They
wrapped them in feed sacks so the jostling of the truck wouldn’t break them and took them home.

Dot came out to look at the truck and just shook her head and went inside. Jim and Bob got busy making fifty Leyden jars, putting aluminum foil inside and outside the surface of each jar, drilling a hole in
the lid and inserting a metal rod with a chain on it which touched the inside foil. Then they filled each jar with water and set them in an empty equipment shed.

Bob said, “Uncle Jim, isn’t lightning static electricity? And isn’t that direct current? Isn’t the power from the co-op alternating current?”

Jim answered, “It starts out as alternating current, but there’s an inverter that changes it to direct current. So direct current is what we need.”

Jim and Bob spent most of the day driving long metal poles into the ground in what Jim called the “lightning collection field.” They ran wires from the poles, twisted them all together into one big cable,
connected that to a single thick cable and then to a braided cable and separated the braid to run wires to each Leyden jar. Jim connected the jars to the terminal box for the electric fence. “Now,” he
said, “all we have to do is wait for a thunderstorm.

They didn’t have to wait long. A couple of nights later, one blew directly over the farm. Jim and Bob were watching from the open barn door where they could stay dry. Dot had gone into the basement,
after she asked Jim where his will was.

A single huge bolt of lightning, attracted to the metal poles, struck with a huge crash. Bob said it was so bright they couldn’t see for a moment, but they could hear the sound of glass breaking. As they
regained their vision, they saw the wires leading to the Leyden jars glowing red. They went over to the shed, and every jar had broken. The tremendous voltage had superheated water in the jars, causing
them to explode. The current continued along to the junction box for the electric fence, fusing it into a big blob of plastic.

Bob said Jim didn’t say anything, just looked at the damage for a few moments. Then he went and knocked on the basement door to tell Dot it was safe to come out. As she came out, she said, “Well,
how much electricity did you harvest?” Jim went into the living room and picked up his Ben Franklin biography.

Later that month, as Dot was paying bills, she looked at a couple of them, made some calculations and said, “You know, the amount you spent for your lightning farm would have paid for electricity for the
electric fence for five years.”

“Yeah,” said Jim, “but if it had worked I’d have been money ahead.” As an electrician, Uncle Jim made a good farmer.

Dan Verner is a Manassas resident. He contributes his thoughts and stories to the Perspective page on Sundays.