<P> The kite experiment is a scientific experiment in which a kite with a pointed, conductive wire attached to its apex is flown near thunder clouds to collect electricity from the air and conduct it down the wet kite string to the ground . It was proposed and may have been conducted by Benjamin Franklin with the assistance of his son William Franklin . The experiment's purpose was to uncover the unknown facts about the nature of lightning and electricity, and with further experiments on the ground, to demonstrate that lightning and electricity were the result of the same phenomenon . </P> <P> In 1750, the electrical nature of lightning was the subject of public discussion in France, with a dissertation of Denis Barbaret receiving a prize in Bordeaux; Barbaret proposed a cause in line with the triboelectric effect . The physicist Jacques de Romas also wrote a mémoire that year with similar ideas . Franklin had listed a dozen analogies between lightning and electricity in his notebooks at the end of 1749 . Speculations of Jean - Antoine Nollet had led to the issue being posed as a prize question at Bordeaux in 1749 . De Romas later defended his own electrical kite proposal as independent of Franklin's . </P>

Who did the experiment with the kite and key