apprentice to his brother James, a
printer who published the New England
Courant.
Benjamin Franklin eventually became a contributor to
this publication and for a time was its
nominal editor. The brothers quarreled, and
Benjamin ran away, going first to
New York, and thence to
Philadelphia, where he arrived in
October,
1723.
Benjamin Franklin soon obtained work as a printer, but
after a few months he was induced by
Governor Keith to go to
London, where, finding Keith's promises
empty, he again worked as a compositor in a
printer's shop until he was brought back to
Philadelphia by a merchant named Thomas
Denham, who gave him a position in his
business. On Denham's death Franklin
returned to his former trade, and soon set
up a printing house of his own from which he
published The Pennsylvania Gazette,
to which he contributed many essays and
which he made a medium for agitating for a
variety of local reforms. His intelligence
combined with a great deal of savvy about
cultivating a positive image of an
industrious and intellectual young man
earned him a great deal of social respect.
In
1732 he began to issue the famous
Poor Richard's Almanac (with
content both original and borrowed), on
which a lot of his popular reputation is
based. Adages from this almanac such as "A
penny saved is a penny earned", are now
commonly quoted every day by people all over
the world.
Franklin and several other members of a
philosophical association joined their
resources in
1731 and began the first
public library in Philadelphia. The
newly founded Library Company
ordered its first books in
1732, mostly theological and educational
tomes, but by
1741 the library also included works on
history, geography, poetry, exploration and
science. The success of this library
encouraged the opening of libraries in other
American cities, and Franklin felt that this
enlightenment partly contributed to the
American colonies' struggle to maintain
their privileges.
In
1758, the year in which he ceased
writing for the Almanac, he printed in it
"Father Abraham's Sermon", now regarded as
the most famous piece of literature produced
in Colonial America.
Meanwhile, Benjamin
Franklin was concerning himself more and
more with public affairs. He set forth a
scheme for an Academy, which was taken up
later and finally developed into the
University of Pennsylvania, and he
founded an American Philosophical Society
for the purpose of enabling scientific men
to communicate their discoveries to one
another. He had already begun the electrical
research that, along with other scientific
inquiries, would occupy him for the rest of
his life (in between bouts of politics and
money-making).
In
1748 he sold his business in order to
get leisure for study, having now acquired
comparative wealth; and in a few years he
had made discoveries that gave him a
reputation with the learned throughout
Europe. These include his investigations of
electricity. Franklin identified
positive and negative electrical charges and
also demonstrated that lightning was
electrical.
Benjamin promoted this theory through the
famous, though extremely dangerous,
experiment of flying a
kite during a
lightning
storm. It has been recently questioned
whether or not Franklin actually did perform
this
experiment; the question remains
controversial. Franklin, in his writings,
displays that he was cognizant of the
dangers and alternative ways to demonstrate
that lightning was electrical. If Franklin
did perform this experiment, he did not do
it in the way that is often described (as it
would have been dramatic but fatal).
Benjamin's inventions include the
lightning rod, Franklin stove and
bifocals. He was one of the best-known
scientists of the
18th century. In recognition of his work
with electricity, Franlin was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society and received its
Copley Medal.
Benjamin Franklin established two major fields of
physical science,
electricity and
meteorology. In his classic work (A
History of The Theories of Electricity &
Aether), Sir Edmund Whittaker (p. 46)
refers to Franklin's inference that
electric charge is not created
by rubbing substances, but only
transferred, so that "the total
quantity in any insulated system is
invariable. This assertion is known as
the principle of conservation of charge".
As a printer and a publisher of a
newspaper, Franklin frequented the farmers'
markets in Philadelphia to gather news. One
day Franklin inferred that reports of a
storm elsewhere in Pennsylvania must be the
storm that visited the Philadelphia area in
recent days. This initiated the notion that
some storms travel, eventually
leading to the synoptic charts of
dynamic meteorology, replacing sole
dependence upon the charts of
climatology.
In
1751 Benjamin Franklin and Dr. Thomas Bond
obtained a charter from the
Pennsylvania legislature to establish a
hospital. Pennsylvania Hospital was the
first hospital in what was to become the
United States of America.
In politics Benjamin Franklin proved very able both as
an administrator and as a controversialist;
but his record as an office-holder is
stained by the use he made of his position
to advance his relatives. His most notable
service in domestic politics was his reform
of the postal system, but his fame as a
statesman rests chiefly on his diplomatic
services in connection with the relations of
the colonies with Great Britain, and later
with
France. He was also involved in the
creation of the first volunteer fire
department, free public library, and many
other civic enterprises.
In
1754 Benjamin Franklin headed the Pennsylvania
delegation to the
Albany Congress. This meeting of several
colonies had been requested by the Board of
Trade in England to improve relations with
the Indians and defense against the French.
Franklin proposed a broad Plan of Union for
the colonies. While the plan was not
adopted, elements of it found their way into
the
Articles of Confederation and the
Constitution.
In
1757 he was sent to England to protest
against the influence of the Penn family in
the government of Pennsylvania, and for five
years he remained there, striving to
enlighten the people and the ministry of the
United Kingdom as to colonial conditions. He
also managed to secure a post for his son,
William Franklin, as Governor of
New Jersey.
On his return to America, he played an
honorable part in the Paxton affair, through
which he lost his seat in the Assembly, but
in
1764 he was again dispatched to England
as agent for the colony, this time to
petition
the King to resume the government from
the hands of the proprietors. In
London he actively opposed the proposed
Stamp Act, but lost the credit for this
and much of his popularity because he
secured for a friend the office of stamp
agent in America. Even his effective work in
helping to obtain the repeal of the act did
not regain his popularity, but he continued
his efforts to present the case for the
Colonies as the troubles thickened toward
the crisis of the
Revolution. This also led to an
irreconcilable conflict with his son, who
remained ardently loyal to the British
Government.
In
1767 Benjamin Franklin crossed to
France, where he was received with
honor; but before his return home in
1775 he lost his position as postmaster
through his share in divulging to
Massachusetts the famous letter of
Hutchinson and Oliver. On his arrival in
Philadelphia he was chosen as a member of
the
Continental Congress and assisted in
editing the
Declaration of Independence.
In December of
1776 he was dispatched to France as
commissioner for the United States. He lived
in a home in the Parisian suburb of Passy
donated by Jacques-Donatien Le Ray de
Chaumont who would become a friend and the
most important foreigner to help the United
States win the war of independence. Ben
Franklin remained in France until
1785, a favorite of French society.
Franklin was so popular that it became
fashionable for wealthy French families to
decorate their parlors with a painting of
him. He conducted the affairs of his country
towards that nation with such success, which
included securing a critical military
alliance and negotiating the
Treaty of Paris (1783), that when he
finally returned, he received a place only
second to that of
George Washington as the champion of
American independence.
When Benjamin was recalled to America in
1785, Le Ray honored him with a commissioned
portrait painted by Joseph Siffred Duplessis
that now hangs in the National Portrait
Gallery of the
Smithsonian Institution in
Washington, DC.
In addition, after his return from France
in
1785, he became a
slavery
abolitionist who eventually became
president of The Society for Promoting the
Abolition of Slavery and the Relief of
Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage.
While in retirement by 1787, he agreed to
attend as a delegate at the meetings that
would produce the
United States Constitution to replace
the
Articles of Confederation. He is the
only Founding Father who is a signatory of
all three of the major documents of the
founding of the United States, The
Declaration of Independence, The
Treaty of Paris and the United States
Constitution.
Later, he finished his autobiography
between 1771 and 1788, at first addressed to
his son, then later completed for the
benefit of mankind at the request of a
friend.
He died on
April 17,
1790 and was interred in the Christ
Church burial grounds in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
At Benjamin Franklin's death Franklin bequeathed ?1000
(about $4400 at the time) to each of the
cities of Boston and Philadelphia, in trust
for 200 years. During the lifetime of the
trust, Philadelphia used it for a variety of
loan programs to local residents; from 1940
to 1990, the money was used mostly for
mortgage loans. When the trust came due,
Philadelphia decided to spend it on
scholarships for local high school students.
Boston used the gift to establish a trade
school that, over time, became the
Franklin Institute of Boston.
In recent years a number of
anti-Semitic groups have been promoting
a forged "quote" supposedly written by
Benjamin Franklin. This quote has been
debunked as a forgery by historians. (See
Neo-Nazi Theory (American founding fathers)).
Franklin's likeness adorns the American
$100 bill. As a result, $100 bills are
sometimes referred to in slang as "Benjamins"
or "Franklins".
