Ornamental Lightning Rods

Abstract

ORNAMENTAL LIGHTNING RODS To the Editor: Two years ago, one of us noted in Technology and Culture the existence of lightning rods in the form of grounded metal spears and tridents that were masked as part of sculptures erected on cornices and pediments (Leonid N. Kryzhanovsky, “The Lightning Rod in 18th-Century St. Petersburg,” 31, no. 4 [October 1990]: 813-17). In a sense, these were part of a tradition of buildings with “built-in” lightning protection. While in Paris in 1767, Benjamin Franklin noted that “buildings that have their roofs covered with lead, or other metal, and spouts of metal continued from the roof into the ground to carry off water, are never hurt by lightning, as whenever it falls on such a building, it passes in the metals and not in the walls” (Experiments: A New Edition of Franklin’s Experiments and Observations on Electricity, ed. I. Bernard Cohen [Cambridge, Mass., 1941], p. 390). In the same period, a peculiar kind of decoration and lightning conductor is described by a Swiss preacher, Johann Baptista Cattaneo, in his book Reise durch Deutschland und Russland (Ulm, 1788, pp. 81 — 82). During his travels in the mid-1780s, Cattaneo saw in the city of Novgorod (northwestern Russia) many chapels topped with crosses from which metal chains hung down to the ground. According to Cattaneo, these chains served as lightning conductors and had been in use long before Franklin’s invention. The temple erected by Solomon at Jerusalem a millennium before the Christian era had the roof and walls coated with heavily gilded wood. On the roof there were metal spears intended to discourage birds, and under the parvis were cisterns into which rainwater flowed off the roof through metal pipes. Because of all this, the temple was never damaged by lightning in more than a thousand years, according to Georg Christoph Lichtenberg (“Paratonnerre,” in Grand dictionnaire universel du XIX1 siècle [Paris, n.d.], 12:202). This was, as it were, an accident. By contrast, in late-19th-century St. Petersburg, architects and builders were explicitly interested in light­ ning protection, but they wanted to give the rods the appearance of ornamentation. Some wealthy homeowners even had these gilded with noble metals. Numerous extant examples ofornamental lightningrods in St. Petersburg are the work of a smith named Karl Winkler (18601911 ). At the 1882 Moscow Exhibition of Industry and Arts, Winkler was awarded a gold medal for his artistry in wrought iron. Other St. Petersburg practitioners of the craft were Fedor Dobritsov and Fabian Yuriev, both more or less contemporary with Winkler. 858 Fig. 1.—Four decorative lightning rods in St. Petersburg. The one at the upper left is atop the palace of the Grand Duke Alexis Alexandrovich, son of Alexander II, who was commander in chief of the Russian navy. At the upper right is the house in which Vladimir Nabokov was born in 1899, at 47 Bolshaya Morskaya (now Hertzen) Street. At the bottom are rods on buildings at 14 Bolshaya Pushkarskaya Street (left) and 74 Fifteenth Line, Vasilyevsky Isle (right). 860 Leonid N. Kryzhanovsky and Yuri G. Krivchenko While it is not certain that all of the city’s decorative iron roof ornaments initially served as lightning rods, those shown in the pictures here (fig. 1) are grounded, and others now serve as antennas. Sometimes the function ofa technological artifact is deliberately made obvious, sometimes it is concealed, perhaps for aesthetic reasons. We present these four photos as examples of the latter. Leonid N. Kryzhanovsky and Yuri G. Krivchenko Mr. Kryzhanovsky is a researcher in the Popov Central Museum of Communications in St. Petersburg. He has published articles on the history of electricity in Russian and English. Mr. Krivchenko is a graduate of the Department of Journalism of the University of St. Petersburg. A professional photographer, he has published photo reports and picture stories in St. Petersburg and Moscow newspapers. The authors thank G. V. Fediunin for valuable suggestions and assistance. ...