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Franklin's letters to Collinson were read before the Royal
Society but were unnoticed. Collinson gathered them together, and
they were published in a pamphlet which attracted wide attention.
Translated into French, they created great excitement, and
Franklin's conclusions were generally accepted by the scientific
men of Europe. The Royal Society, tardily awakened, elected
Franklin a member and in 1753 awarded him the Copley medal with a
complimentary address.*

* It may be useful to mention some of the scientific facts and
mechanical principles which were known to Europeans at this time.
More than one learned essay has been written to prove the
mechanical indebtedness of the modern world to the ancient,
particularly to the works of those mechanically minded Greeks:
Archimedes, Aristotle, Ctesibius, and Hero of Alexandria. The
Greeks employed the lever, the tackle, and the crane, the
force-pump, and the suction-pump. They had discovered that steam
could be mechanically applied, though they never made any
practical use of steam. In common with other ancients they knew
the principle of the mariner's compass. The Egyptians had the
water-wheel and the rudimentary blast-furnace. The pendulum clock
appears to have been an invention of the Middle Ages. The art of
printing from movable type, beginning with Gutenberg about 1450,
helped to further the Renaissance. The improved mariner's compass
enabled Columbus to find the New world; gunpowder made possible
its conquest. The compound microscope and the first practical
telescope came from the spectacle makers of Middelburg, Holland,
the former about 1590 and the latter about 1608. Harvey, an