Benjamin Franklin was a genius, recognized as such at home and abroad in his own time and still today. George Washington referred to him as "that great philosopher." Thomas Jefferson called him "the greatest man of the age and country in which he lived." John Adams said of him: "Franklin had a great genius, original, sagacious, and inventive, capable of discoveries in science no less than of improvements in the fine arts and the mechanical arts....His reputation was more universal than that of Leibnitz or Newton, Frederick or Voltaire." Much of Franklin's reputation was a result of his phenomenal demonstration of capturing lightning from the sky and bringing it safely to the ground without harming people or property. Before this, according to Adams, grown men would hide under their beds in superstitious fear during storms of lightning and thunder.