Electrified Age

Nobody could get ahead of the Russians--not even Ben Franklin. Last week Moscow's trade union paper Trud took a tuck in the tail of his kite. Said Trud, in effect: Ben was just wasting his time in that thunderstorm, back in 1752. He could have saved himself trouble and danger* by dropping a postcard to St. Petersburg where Mikhail Vasilievich Lomonosov had proved, a year before, that lightning is electricity.

The magazine Tekhnika Molodezhy (Technology for Youth) tossed off a few more sparks. Russians, reiterated Tekhnika, had invented the electric arc, the electric light, the electric motor and high-tension power transmissions. And how had the capitalist U.S. utilized these Russian gifts to mankind? By inventing the electric chair, which, "lately, has been used more & more to do away with revolutionary workers condemned to death with the assistance of dirty police provocation by the FBI."

* One lamentable fact overlooked by Trud: when reports of Franklin's experiment reached Russia, Russian Scientist Georgy V. Richwan lofted a bigger, more aggressive kite and electrocuted himself.

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