Benjamin Franklin (1706 - 1790) was an American printer, writer, scientist, inventor, diplomat and statesman, and one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. He conducted influential experiments on electricity, built a network of civic institutions in Philadelphia, and as envoy to France negotiated the alliance and the peace treaty that secured American independence. [1][2]
Early life
Franklin was born in Boston on 17 January 1706, the fifteenth child of a soap and candle maker. He attended Boston Latin School only briefly and was largely self-taught, apprenticed at twelve to his brother James, a printer, for whom he secretly wrote the "Silence Dogood" letters. [1]
He left Boston at seventeen and settled in Philadelphia, working as a printer there and in London before establishing his own press. His Pennsylvania Gazette and the annual Poor Richard's Almanack, published from 1732 under the name Richard Saunders, made him prosperous and widely read throughout the colonies. [3]
Civic life
Franklin organised a succession of institutions that shaped Philadelphia and American public life: a subscription library, a volunteer fire company, a fire insurance scheme, a hospital, the American Philosophical Society, and the academy that became the University of Pennsylvania. He served as postmaster of Philadelphia and later as joint deputy postmaster general for the colonies, reorganising the postal system. [2]
Science and invention
From the 1740s Franklin investigated electricity, proposing the theory of a single electrical fluid with positive and negative states and introducing terms still in use. He argued that lightning was an electrical discharge and proposed the experiment, associated with a kite flown in a storm in 1752, to demonstrate it; the practical result was the lightning rod. The Royal Society awarded him the Copley Medal in 1753. [4]
His other work included the Franklin stove, bifocal spectacles, the glass armonica, studies of population growth, and the charting of the Gulf Stream, undertaken during his many Atlantic crossings. He patented none of his inventions, holding that they should be freely available. [1]
Revolution and diplomacy
Franklin spent much of the period from 1757 to 1775 in London as agent for several colonies, at first seeking accommodation within the empire. His testimony against the Stamp Act in 1766 was widely reported, but by the early 1770s relations had broken down and he returned to America convinced of the need for separation. [2]
He sat on the committee that drafted the Declaration of Independence and signed it in 1776, then sailed to France as the American commissioner. There his reputation as a scientist and his cultivated plainness of manner made him a celebrated figure, and he secured the Treaty of Alliance of 1778 that brought France into the war. He was a principal negotiator of the Treaty of Paris of 1783, which recognised American independence. [3]
Later life and legacy
Returning to Philadelphia, Franklin served as president of the Pennsylvania executive council and attended the Constitutional Convention of 1787 as its oldest delegate, urging compromise and signing the Constitution. Having earlier owned enslaved people, he became president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society and petitioned Congress against slavery shortly before his death. [1]
He died in Philadelphia on 17 April 1790. His unfinished Autobiography became a classic of the genre, and his likeness appears on the United States hundred-dollar bill. [2]
