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Lightning
and Boats Unversity of Florida by Ewen M. Thomson |
Photo by E. Thomson
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When Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning rod in 1750, he noted that it could also be used to protect ships. It was not long before the first ships were to benefit from his ideas. In the late 18th century the sailing warships of the British navy were fitted with lengths of anchor chain to prevent their wooden masts from splintering when struck by lightning. Franklin himself was unsure of the actual mechanism, thinking initially that a pointed rod would discharge the thunderstorm "for if there be a rod sharpened ... the electrical fire would be drawn out of a cloud" but five years later covering all bases by adding "pointed rods would either prevent a stroke or would conduct it so that the building should suffer no damage". For whatever reason, this technology worked. The discharge physics of the lightning strike to ground would not be well understood until research done in South Africa in the 1930's and later.
Of even more concern were some types of lightning damage that were impossible to explain with the traditional scientific model. In the light of these inconsistencies, Dr. Thomson concluded, in a yet unpublished study, that key assumptions in the traditional model were invalid Removing these assumptions and reinterpreting the fundamental science has resulted in a new model that enabled innovative technology to be developed to overcome the above practical limitations. This technology is now covered by a patent issued by the University of Florida ( USA Patent Number 6,708,638 ) and licensed solely to Marine Lightning Protection Inc.
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