Benjamin Franklin was a smart guy and he had been experimenting with the Leiden jar and he saw what the electricity looked like when he discharged the Leiden jar. He then saw lightning looked just like the electricity from a Leiden jar when he discharged it. He knew that when you discharged a Leiden jar to something but there was a pointy thing next to it the electricity goes to the pointy thing so if a pointy thing on a house then the electricity goes to the house. To stop it from blowing up the house there is a wire attached to the pointy thing that leads down to a metal stick in the ground where the electricity dies out because the ground is a terrible conductor.
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