a. (sb.) [f. the proper name Franklin + -IAN.]
A. adj. Of or pertaining to Benjamin Franklin; also, following Franklin (in politics).
1767. Priestley, Hist. Electricity, in Franklin’s Wks. (1887), II. 65. The Franklinian system is now universally adopted, where science flourishes.
1808. J. Webster, Nat. Phil., 133. The other theory, of positive and negative electricity, was first taken up by Watson, but was afterwards illustrated, digested, and confirmed by Franklin, and from thence it is called the Franklinian Theory.
1814. J. Q. Adams, Wks. (1856), X. 90. In politics, Rittenhouse was good, simple, ignorant, well-meaning, Franklinian, democrat, totally ignorant of the world.
B. sb. A follower of Franklin; a Franklinist.
1794. G. Adams, Nat. & Exp. Philos., IV. xlvi. 283. You will find the ideas of the Franklinians concerning it quite contradictory.
So Franklinic a. [see -IC], an epithet applied to electricity excited by friction; Franklinism [see -ISM], frictional electricity; Franklinist [see -IST], one who follows Franklin in his theory of electricity.
1767. Priestley, Hist. Electricity, in Franklin’s Wks. (1887), II. 65. The terms Franklinism, Franklinist, and the Franklinian system, occur in almost every page.
1772. Franklin, Letter to William Franklin, 22 Aug., Wks. 1887, IV. 501. All the rest, who have in any degree acquainted themselves with electricity, are, as he calls them, Franklinists.
1862. Grove, Corr. Phys. Forces (ed. 4), 115. The difference between what is called franklinic electricity, or that produced by an ordinary electrical machine, and voltaic electricity, or that produced by the ordinary voltaic battery, is that the former is of much greater intensity than the latter, or has a greater power of overcoming resistance.
1883. E. C. Mann, Psychol. Med., 556. It has also been called ‘frictional’ electricity, from the mode of its production; and also ‘Franklinic’ electricity, or ‘Franklinism,’ in memory of the individual who—I will not say discovered it, but who—made out more about it than any one else at the time that he worked at the subject.
