Physicists Prefer Turkeys
Geneticists have their fruit flies, pharmacologists have their mice, physiologists have their primates, and psychologists have their pigeons; but physicists prefer turkeys. Benjamin Franklin performed some of the first experiments with electricity after retiring from his printing business in 1745. Indeed, Franklin was one of the founders of the scientific study of electricity. Of course, many scientists look for practical application of their work, and Franklin believed that electrocuted turkeys were much more tender than otherwise prepared birds. In the summer of 1749, Franklin hosted a barbecue in which an electrocuted turkey was roasted and served. The fire was lighted electrically, and Franklin had improvised an electrically actuated motor to rotate the turkey on a spit.
Franklin may have tempered his experiments with turkeys after 1750. On December 23, 1750, Franklin attempted to electrocute a turkey for his Christmas dinner. He used two large Leyden jars (a primitive air dielectric capacitor) which he described as having the capacity of forty typical jars. He took a shock through his arms that knocked him unconscious. When he came to his senses, he felt a "violent, quick shaking of my body, which gradually remitted." Franklin was numb for a while, and he was sore for a few days thereafter. Franklin communicated this accident to others who were experimenting with electricity to warn them of the dangers. He went on to conduct experiments that proved that electrical charge was conserved, and he invented the lightning rod after observing that sharp points more easily released and accepted charge. His experiments are summarized in his book, "Experiments and Observations on Electricity."
More than two hundred years later, in 1981, scientists at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center used leftovers from a Thanksgiving turkey in their discovery of excimer laser surgery. Possessing one of the first ArF excimer lasers, they knew that high fluence pulses from the 193 nm laser light would cleanly cut plastic. They did some quick experiments on their fingernails, which patterned easily, but knowing the dangers of ultraviolet radiation on skin, they weren't willing to see what would happen on skin. One of them, Rangaswamy "Sri" Srinivasan, brought some leftover Thanksgiving turkey to the lab, and they observed very clean incisions of cartilage, much cleaner than incisions made with a 532 nm Q-switched, frequency-doubled, YAG laser. This led to a patent [3] and the subsequent development of laser refractive eye surgery.
References:
1. December 23, 1750: Ben Franklin Attempts to Electrocute a Turkey, APS News vol. 15, no. 11 (December 2006).
2. James J. Wynne, "Ben Franklin Blazes Trail for IBM Inventors," APS News vol. 16, no. 3 (March 2007).
3. Samuel E. Blum, Rangaswamy Srinivasan, James J. Wynne, "Far
Ultraviolet Surgical and Dental Procedures," US Patent No.4,784,135
(Nov 15, 1988).