Ebenezer Kinnersley

Ebenezer Kinnersley was an English scientist, inventor and lecturer who investigated electricity in colonial Philadelphia. Born on 30 November 1711 and dying on 4 July 1778, he belonged to the circle around Benjamin Franklin that carried out the Philadelphia experiments, whose results reached European scholars through Franklin's letters to Peter Collinson. In 1748 he showed that the electric fluid passes through water, using a ten foot trough, and he devised a magical picture and the ringing of chimes of bells by electricity. From 1751 he gave lectures on the newly discovered electrical fire in Philadelphia, Boston, Newport and New York, and in Boston he found a difference between the electricity of glass and sulphur globes that supported the positive and negative theory over Du Fay's vitreous and resinous electricity. He also invented an electrical thermometer and showed that electricity can produce heat. He was a master and then professor of English and oratory at the College of Philadelphia from 1753 until 1772, and was elected to the American Philosophical Society in 1768.