The electrical nature of lightning had been the subject of public discussion in France in 1750, with a dissertation of Denis Barbaret receiving a prize in Bordeaux; Barbaret had proposed a cause in line with the triboelectric effect.

The physicist Jacques de Romas also wrote a memoir that year with similar ideas.

Benjamin 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 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.

In 1752, Franklin had proposed an experiment with conductive rods to attract lightning to a Leyden jar, an early form of capacitor.

Such an experiment was carried out in May 1752 at Marly-la-Ville in northern France by Thomas-François Dalibard.

An attempt to replicate the experiment killed Georg Wilhelm Richmann in Saint Petersburg in August 1753; he is thought to be the victim of ball lightning.

Franklin himself is said to have conducted the experiment in June 1752, supposedly on the top of the spire on Christ Church in Philadelphia; however, doubts have been expressed about whether the experiment was actually performed.