The news of the death of Georg Wilhelm Richmann, a professor in St. Petersburg, who was killed by lightning in 1753 during his attempt at measuring the intensity of the electric field in the atmosphere, caused Diviš to become interested in atmospheric electricity. In letters, he proposed to several physicists (among them the Academies of Science in St. Petersburg and Vienna, as well as Leonhard Euler) to construct a "weather-machine" – a device that would suppress and prevent thunderstorms and lightning by constantly sucking atmospheric electricity out of the air. His theories were already in his time recognized as fringe science, and thus ignored. When Diviš did not receive answers, he took it up on himself to build such a machine in his own parish.