Lightning Explained, Part 3 It is not clear however that this
effect can be significantly enhanced through the use of devices
that use sharp conductive points. Any conducting protruding
object or even the edges or corners of such tall structures
would also produce charges via the same mechanism, streamers and
in similar rates. Therefore the effect is mostly determined by
the particular nature or waveform produced by the slowly varying
field. How we got here When Ben Franklin first proposed mounting
needle sharp iron rods at the tops of buildings, he didn't think
that they would be hit by lightning. He initially thought that
such rods would discharge the clouds and so his choice of using
sharp tipped rods had no connection with the mechanism that he
had accidentally discovered: upward leader initiation.
Franklin's genius was to mount any grounded metallic object
above a structure and to adapt his views to what he observed
rather than proposed. Modern knowledge of electric discharges
however confirms that the s