lightning rods

To me this does not belong under meaningless drivel but i found no appropriate forum so I will put it here and you can move it if you see a better place.

In the 18th century, homes would catch on fire fairly often due to lightning. Ben Franklin invented the lightning rod and for a long time, they were on almost every house. In my childhood they were replaced by television antennas which were grounded.

In this last year, several houses in the Chicago area were hit by lightning and caught fire. I started googling up why there is no lightning rods and really I can find no explanation, the antennas went down and this leaves houses without lightning protection which I can find. Does anyone know why no one uses a lightning rod any more?

I don't know the answer but I grew up in old, cold farm houses in Illinois and they all had lightening rods. Now we live in more wooded areas of the Ozarks and someone said that here we don't need them because the taller trees draw the lightening.
But at one house lightening struck a huge old pine in our back yard and did in a couple electronic things in the house. I think I will look into them...we are in a two story house and have horrendous spring storms and have lost some of our large close by oaks to a fungus. No TV antenna here.

I found an error in my thinking and not to the better, the tv antenna if they are there do not have a large enough wire ground to absorb a lightning strike. I too am unprotected. Now that i know this, i will replace the tv antenna with a lightning rod and braided cable. The entire thing including rod, cable, stand and clips will run less than 100 dollars. For a few dollars more I would go with copper, to me it is very beautiful when aged, but I fear thieves will want to take the copper wire to the ground and if i do not use copper to the ground I run into dissimilar metals problems.

It is another myth large trees will protect your house. In fact trees are such poor conductors of electricity the lightning often jumps to the house to find a better ground through the pipes and electrical wiring in the house.