Physics
Scientific paper
Feb 1946
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=1946natur.157..196w&link_type=abstract
Nature, Volume 157, Issue 3981, pp. 196 (1946).
Physics
Scientific paper
IN the ``Mémoires'' of the Baron de Grimm1, describing the ascent on June 27, 1783, from the Champ de Mars at Paris of the first balloon (globe airostatique) in the presence of an enthusiastic crowd of spectators, he says: ``Beaucoup de gens qui se piquent de rester froids au milieu de l'enthousiasme public, n'ont pas manqué de répéter: Mais quelle utilité retirera-t-on de ces expériences ? A quoi bon cette découverte dont on fait tant de bruit ? Le vénérable Franklin'' (who was presumably in Paris at the time) ``répond avec sa simplicité accoutumée: Eh! à quoi bon l'enfant qui vient de naître ? '' On my directing the attention of Sir Henry Tizard to this passage, he told me that the mot here attributed to Franklin is generally quoted as Faraday's. It is so, for example, in Sir Richard Gregory's ``Discovery'' (1916), p. 3, where we are told (the authority is not given) that, after an experiment performed by Faraday at one of his Royal Institution lectures, a lady asked: ``But, Professor Faraday, even if the effect you explained was obtained, what is the use of it ?'' The memorable reply was: `Madam, will you tell me the use of a newborn child ?''' If the story be true, Faraday was no doubt, whether or not aware at the moment of its source, remembering the saying of Franklin reported by Grimm. I see that in a note to the latest edition (1937) of Bartlett's ``Familiar Quotations'', the credit is given to Franklin, on the authority of James Parton in his ``Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin'', whose statement, it is added, was taken from Grimm's ``Mémoires''.
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