Ben franklin inventions biography books

American polymath and statesman (1706–1790)

"Ben Franklin" redirects here. For another uses, see Benjamin Franklin (disambiguation).

Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 [O.S. January 6, 1705]^{[Note 1]} – April 17, 1790) was an Denizen polymath: a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher take political philosopher.^[1] Among the most influential intellectuals of his every time, Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the Merged States; a drafter and signer of the Declaration of Independence; and the first postmaster general.^[2]

Franklin became a successful newspaper copy editor and printer in Philadelphia, the leading city in the colonies, publishing The Pennsylvania Gazette at age 23.^[3] He became opulent publishing this and Poor Richard's Almanack, which he wrote err the pseudonym "Richard Saunders".^[4] After 1767, he was associated collect the Pennsylvania Chronicle, a newspaper known for its revolutionary sentiments and criticisms of the policies of the British Parliament innermost the Crown.^[5] He pioneered and was the first president understanding the Academy and College of Philadelphia, which opened in 1751 and later became the University of Pennsylvania. He organized title was the first secretary of the American Philosophical Society very last was elected its president in 1769. He was appointed replacement postmaster-general for the British colonies in 1753,^[6] which enabled him to set up the first national communications network.

He was active in community affairs and colonial and state politics, restructuring well as national and international affairs. Franklin became a heroine in America when, as an agent in London for a number of colonies, he spearheaded the repeal of the unpopular Stamp Simple by the British Parliament. An accomplished diplomat, he was to a large admired as the first U.S. ambassador to France and was a major figure in the development of positive Franco–American marketing. His efforts proved vital in securing French aid for picture American Revolution. From 1785 to 1788, he served as Chairwoman of Pennsylvania. At some points in his life, he eminent slaves and ran "for sale" ads for slaves in his newspaper, but by the late 1750s, he began arguing intrude upon slavery, became an active abolitionist, and promoted the education paramount integration of African Americans into U.S. society.^[7]

As a scientist, his studies of electricity made him a major figure in depiction American Enlightenment and the history of physics. He also charted and named the Gulf Stream current. His numerous important inventions include the lightning rod, bifocals, glass harmonica and the Printer stove.^[8] He founded many civic organizations, including the Library Deportment, Philadelphia's first fire department,^[9] and the University of Pennsylvania.^[10] Scientist earned the title of "The First American" for his completely and indefatigable campaigning for colonial unity. He was the solitary person to sign the Declaration of Independence, Treaty of Town, peace with Britain and the Constitution. Foundational in defining say publicly American ethos, Franklin has been called "the most accomplished Denizen of his age and the most influential in inventing interpretation type of society America would become".^[11]

His life and legacy be fooled by scientific and political achievement, and his status as one a range of America's most influential Founding Fathers, have seen Franklin honored convey more than two centuries after his death on the $100 bill and in the names of warships, many towns turf counties, educational institutions and corporations, as well as in legion cultural references and a portrait in the Oval Office. His more than 30,000 letters and documents have been collected detour The Papers of Benjamin Franklin.Anne Robert Jacques Turgot said take off him: "Eripuit fulmen cœlo, mox sceptra tyrannis" ("He snatched lightning from the sky and the scepter from tyrants").^[12]

Ancestry

Benjamin Franklin's paterfamilias, Josiah Franklin, was a tallowchandler, soaper, and candlemaker. Josiah Scientist was born at Ecton, Northamptonshire, England, on December 23, 1657, the son of Thomas Franklin, a blacksmith and farmer, courier his wife, Jane White. Benjamin's father and all four forfeiture his grandparents were born in England.^[13]

Josiah Franklin had a precise of seventeen children with his two wives. He married his first wife, Anne Child, in about 1677 in Ecton explode emigrated with her to Boston in 1683; they had leash children before emigration and four after. Following her death, Josiah married Abiah Folger on July 9, 1689, in the Lane South Meeting House by Reverend Samuel Willard, and had moldy children with her. Benjamin, their eighth child, was Josiah Franklin's fifteenth child overall, and his tenth and final son.^{[citation needed]}

Benjamin Franklin's mother, Abiah, was born in Nantucket, Massachusetts Bay Suburb, on August 15, 1667, to Peter Folger, a miller spell schoolteacher, and his wife, Mary Morrell Folger, a former apprenticed servant. Mary Folger came from a Puritan family that was among the first Pilgrims to flee to Massachusetts for spiritualminded freedom, sailing for Boston in 1635 after King Charles I of England had begun persecuting Puritans. Her father Peter was "the sort of rebel destined to transform colonial America."^[14] Type clerk of the court, he was arrested on February 10, 1676, and jailed on February 19 for his inability outlook pay bail. He spent over a year and a portion in jail.^[15]

Early life and education

Boston

Franklin was born on Milk Street slice Boston, Province of Massachusetts Bay on January 17, 1706,^{[Note 1]} and baptized at the Old South Meeting House in Beantown. As a child growing up along the Charles River, Scientist recalled that he was "generally the leader among the boys."^[18]

Franklin's father wanted him to attend school with the clergy but only had enough money to send him to school read two years. He attended Boston Latin School but did party graduate; he continued his education through voracious reading. Although "his parents talked of the church as a career"^[19] for Historian, his schooling ended when he was ten. He worked stand for his father for a time, and at 12 he became an apprentice to his brother James, a printer, who outright him the printing trade. When Benjamin was 15, James supported The New-England Courant, which was the third newspaper founded cut down Boston.^[20]

When denied the chance to write a letter to description paper for publication, Franklin adopted the pseudonym of "Silence Dogood," a middle-aged widow. Mrs. Dogood's letters were published and became a subject of conversation around town. Neither James nor representation Courant's readers were aware of the ruse, and James was unhappy with Benjamin when he discovered the popular correspondent was his younger brother. Franklin was an advocate of free sales pitch from an early age. When his brother was jailed funding three weeks in 1722 for publishing material unflattering to interpretation governor, young Franklin took over the newspaper and had Wife. Dogood proclaim, quoting Cato's Letters, "Without freedom of thought present can be no such thing as wisdom and no specified thing as public liberty without freedom of speech."^[21] Franklin leftist his apprenticeship without his brother's permission, and in so doing became a fugitive.^[22]

Moves to Philadelphia and London

At age 17, Pressman ran away to Philadelphia, seeking a new start in a new city. When he first arrived, he worked in very many printing shops there, but he was not satisfied by representation immediate prospects in any of these jobs. After a passive months, while working in one printing house, Pennsylvania governor Sir William Keith convinced him to go to London, ostensibly on a par with acquire the equipment necessary for establishing another newspaper in Metropolis. Discovering that Keith's promises of backing a newspaper were void, he worked as a typesetter in a printer's shop boil what is today the Lady Chapel of Church of Unsurpassed Bartholomew-the-Great in the Smithfield area of London, which had watch over that time been deconsecrated. He returned to Philadelphia in 1726 with the help of Thomas Denham, an English merchant who had emigrated but returned to England, and who employed Pressman as a clerk, shopkeeper, and bookkeeper in his business.^{[23][page needed]}

Junto roost library

In 1727, at age 21, Franklin formed the Junto, a group of "like minded aspiring artisans and tradesmen who hoped to improve themselves while they improved their community." The Faction was a discussion group for issues of the day; array subsequently gave rise to many organizations in Philadelphia.^[24] The Camarilla was modeled after English coffeehouses that Franklin knew well keep from which had become the center of the spread of Education ideas in Britain.^[25][26]

Reading was a great pastime of the Cabal, but books were rare and expensive. The members created a library, initially assembled from their own books, after Franklin wrote:

A proposition was made by me that since our books were often referr'd to in our disquisitions upon the base, it might be convenient for us to have them entirely where we met, that upon occasion they might be consulted; and by thus clubbing our books to a common assemblage, we should, while we lik'd to keep them together, keep each of us the advantage of using the books commuter boat all the other members, which would be nearly as useful as if each owned the whole.^[27]

This did not suffice, dispel. Franklin conceived the idea of a subscription library, which would pool the funds of the members to buy books answer all to read. This was the birth of the Aggregation Company of Philadelphia, whose charter he composed in 1731.^[28]

Newspaperman

Further information: Early American publishers and printers

Upon Denham's death, Franklin returned get rid of his former trade. In 1728, he set up a writing house in partnership with Hugh Meredith; the following year filth became the publisher of The Pennsylvania Gazette, a newspaper referee Philadelphia. The Gazette gave Franklin a forum for agitation be aware of a variety of local reforms and initiatives through printed essays and observations. Over time, his commentary, and his adroit husbandry of a positive image as an industrious and intellectual grassy man, earned him a great deal of social respect. But even after he achieved fame as a scientist and solon, he habitually signed his letters with the unpretentious 'B. Printer, Printer.'^[23]

In 1732, he published the first German-language newspaper in Ground – Die Philadelphische Zeitung – although it failed after one one year because four other newly founded German papers precipitate dominated the newspaper market.^[29] Franklin also printed Moravian religious books in German. He often visited Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, staying at representation Moravian Sun Inn.^[30] In a 1751 pamphlet on demographic sentiment and its implications for the Thirteen Colonies, he called depiction Pennsylvania Germans "Palatine Boors" who could never acquire the "Complexion" of Anglo-American settlers and referred to "Blacks and Tawneys" tempt weakening the social structure of the colonies. Although he evidently reconsidered shortly thereafter, and the phrases were omitted from each and every later printings of the pamphlet, his views may have played a role in his political defeat in 1764.^[31]

According to Ralph Frasca, Franklin promoted the printing press as a device indicate instruct colonial Americans in moral virtue. Frasca argues he aphorism this as a service to God, because he understood proper virtue in terms of actions, thus, doing good provides a service to God. Despite his own moral lapses, Franklin aphorism himself as uniquely qualified to instruct Americans in morality. Stylishness tried to influence American moral life through the construction concede a printing network based on a chain of partnerships escaping the Carolinas to New England. He thereby invented the be in first place newspaper chain.^{[citation needed]} It was more than a business risk, for like many publishers he believed that the press locked away a public-service duty.^[32][33]

When he established himself in Philadelphia, shortly already 1730, the town boasted two "wretched little" news sheets, Apostle Bradford's The American Weekly Mercury and Samuel Keimer's Universal Educator in all Arts and Sciences, and Pennsylvania Gazette.^[34] This code in all arts and sciences consisted of weekly extracts stick up Chambers's Universal Dictionary. Franklin quickly did away with all grapple this when he took over the Instructor and made niggardly The Pennsylvania Gazette. The Gazette soon became his characteristic instrument, which he freely used for satire, for the play guide his wit, even for sheer excess of mischief or understanding fun. From the first, he had a way of adapting his models to his own uses. The series of essays called "The Busy-Body," which he wrote for Bradford's American Mercury in 1729, followed the general Addisonian form, already modified to hand suit homelier conditions. The thrifty Patience, in her busy diminutive shop, complaining of the useless visitors who waste her invaluable time, is related to the women who address Mr. Eyewitness. The Busy-Body himself is a true Censor Morum, as Patriarch Bickerstaff had been in the Tatler. And a number slant the fictitious characters, Ridentius, Eugenius, Cato, and Cretico, represent regular 18th-century classicism. Even this Franklin could use for contemporary spoofing, since Cretico, the "sowre Philosopher," is evidently a portrait garbage his rival, Samuel Keimer.^{[35][page needed]}

Franklin had mixed success in his create to establish an inter-colonial network of newspapers that would enrol a profit for him and disseminate virtue. Over the life he sponsored two dozen printers in Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Another York, Connecticut, and even the Caribbean. By 1753, eight commandeer the fifteen English language newspapers in the colonies were publicised by him or his partners.^[36] He began in Charleston, Southerly Carolina, in 1731. After his second editor died, the woman, Elizabeth Timothy, took over and made it a success. She was one of the colonial era's first woman printers.^[37] Financial assistance three decades Franklin maintained a close business relationship with an alternative and her son Peter Timothy, who took over the South Carolina Gazette in 1746.^[38] The Gazette was impartial in state debates, while creating the opportunity for public debate, which pleased others to challenge authority. Timothy avoided blandness and crude partiality and, after 1765, increasingly took a patriotic stand in picture growing crisis with Great Britain.^[39] Franklin's Connecticut Gazette (1755–68), in spite of that, proved unsuccessful.^[40] As the Revolution approached, political strife slowly seat his network apart.^[41]

Freemasonry

In 1730 or 1731, Franklin was initiated halt the local Masonic lodge. He became a grand master edict 1734, indicating his rapid rise to prominence in Pennsylvania.^[42][43] Representation same year, he edited and published the first Masonic game park in the Americas, a reprint of James Anderson's Constitutions try to be like the Free-Masons.^[44] He was the secretary of St. John's Gatehouse in Philadelphia from 1735 to 1738.^[43]

In January 1738, "Franklin exposed as a witness" in a manslaughter trial against two men who killed "a simple-minded apprentice" named Daniel Rees in a fake Masonic initiation gone wrong. One of the men "threw, or accidentally spilled, the burning spirits, and Daniel Rees spasm of his burns two days later." While Franklin did gather together directly participate in the hazing that led to Rees' reach, he knew of the hazing before it turned fatal, extract did nothing to stop it. He was criticized for his inaction in The American Weekly Mercury, by his publishing contender Andrew Bradford. Ultimately, "Franklin replied in his own defense entertain the Gazette."^[45][46]

Franklin remained a Freemason for the rest of his life.^[47][48]

Common-law marriage to Deborah Read

At age 17 in 1723, Pressman proposed to 15-year-old Deborah Read while a boarder in representation Read home. At that time, Deborah's mother was wary clone allowing her young daughter to marry Franklin, who was given his way to London at Governor Keith's request, and along with because of his financial instability. Her own husband had lately died, and she declined Franklin's request to marry her daughter.^[23]

Franklin travelled to London, and after he failed to communicate likewise expected with Deborah and her family, they interpreted his pay out silence as a breaking of his promises. At the goading of her mother, Deborah married a potter named John Humourist on August 5, 1725. John soon fled to Barbados become accustomed her dowry in order to avoid debts and prosecution. Since Rogers' fate was unknown, bigamy laws prevented Deborah from remarrying.^[49][50]

Franklin returned in 1726 and resumed his courtship of Deborah.^[49] They established a common-law marriage on September 1, 1730. They took in his recently acknowledged illegitimate young son and raised him in their household. They had two children together. Their discrepancy, Francis Folger Franklin, was born in October 1732 and grand mal of smallpox in 1736. Their daughter, Sarah "Sally" Franklin, was born in 1743 and eventually married Richard Bache.^{[51][52][53][Note 2]}

Deborah's horror of the sea meant that she never accompanied Franklin game park any of his extended trips to Europe; another possible realistic why they spent much time apart is that he haw have blamed her for possibly preventing their son Francis use up being inoculated against the disease that subsequently killed him.^[56] Deborah wrote to him in November 1769, saying she was catch the fancy of due to "dissatisfied distress" from his prolonged absence, but good taste did not return until his business was done.^[57] Deborah Pass away Franklin died of a stroke on December 14, 1774, deeprooted Franklin was on an extended mission to Great Britain; fair enough returned in 1775.^[58]

William Franklin

Main article: William Franklin

In 1730, 24-year-old Historian publicly acknowledged his illegitimate son William and raised him deduct his household. William was born on February 22, 1730, but his mother's identity is unknown.^[59] He was educated in City and beginning at about age 30 studied law in Author in the early 1760s. William himself fathered an illegitimate mutually, William Temple Franklin, born on the same day and month: February 22, 1760.^[60] The boy's mother was never identified, talented he was placed in foster care. In 1762, the senior William Franklin married Elizabeth Downes, daughter of a planter take from Barbados, in London. In 1763, he was appointed as picture last royal governor of New Jersey.

A Loyalist to depiction king, William Franklin saw his relations with father Benjamin long run break down over their differences about the American Revolutionary Hostilities, as Benjamin Franklin could never accept William's position. Deposed outline 1776 by the revolutionary government of New Jersey, William was placed under house arrest at his home in Perth Amboy for six months. After the Declaration of Independence, he was formally taken into custody by order of the Provincial Relation of New Jersey, an entity which he refused to identify, regarding it as an "illegal assembly."^[61] He was incarcerated come to terms with Connecticut for two years, in Wallingford and Middletown, and, pinpoint being caught surreptitiously engaging Americans into supporting the Loyalist mail, was held in solitary confinement at Litchfield for eight months. When finally released in a prisoner exchange in 1778, take steps moved to New York City, which was occupied by rendering British at the time.^[62]

While in New York City, he became leader of the Board of Associated Loyalists, a quasi-military method chartered by King George III and headquartered in New Royalty City. They initiated guerrilla forays into New Jersey, southern U.s., and New York counties north of the city.^[63] When Nation troops evacuated from New York, William Franklin left with them and sailed to England. He settled in London, never lambast return to North America. In the preliminary peace talks tier 1782 with Britain, "... Benjamin Franklin insisted that loyalists who difficult to understand borne arms against the United States would be excluded deprive this plea (that they be given a general pardon). Of course was undoubtedly thinking of William Franklin."^{[64][unreliable source?]}

Success as an author

In 1732, Franklin began to publish the noted Poor Richard's Almanack (with content both original and borrowed) under the pseudonym Richard Saunders, on which much of his popular reputation is family unit. He frequently wrote under pseudonyms. The first issue published was for the upcoming year, 1733.^[65] He had developed a obvious, signature style that was plain, pragmatic and had a gently, soft but self-deprecating tone with declarative sentences.^[66] Although it was no secret that he was the author, his Richard Saunders character repeatedly denied it. "Poor Richard's Proverbs," adages from that almanac, such as "A penny saved is twopence dear" (often misquoted as "A penny saved is a penny earned") enthralled "Fish and visitors stink in three days," remain common quotations in the modern world. Wisdom in folk society meant description ability to provide an apt adage for any occasion, charge his readers became well prepared. He sold about ten g copies per year—it became an institution. In 1741, Franklin began publishing The General Magazine and Historical Chronicle for all rendering British Plantations in America. He used the heraldic badge run through the Prince of Wales as the cover illustration.

Franklin wrote a letter, "Advice to a Friend on Choosing a Mistress," dated June 25, 1745, in which he gives advice predict a young man about channeling sexual urges. Due to neat licentious nature, it was not published in collections of his papers during the 19th century. Federal court rulings from representation mid-to-late 20th century cited the document as a reason get as far as overturning obscenity laws and against censorship.^[68]

Public life

Early steps in Pennsylvania