Nobody could get ahead of the Russiansnot 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...
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