Benjamin Franklin
New York times
Benjamin's Life
Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston on January 17, 1706. He was the tenth son of soap maker, Josiah Franklin. Benjamin's mother was Abiah Folger, the second wife of Josiah. In all, Josiah would father 17 children.When Benjamin was 15 his brother started The New England Courant the first "newspaper" in Boston. Running away was illegal. regardless Ben took a boat to New York where he hoped to find work as a printer. He didn't, and walked across New Jersey, finally arriving in Philadelphia via a boat ride. there e found a girl named Deborah Read and they later got marriedHe started working actively for Independence. He naturally thought his son William, now the Royal governor of New Jersey, would agree with his views. William did not. William remained a Loyal Englishman. This caused a rift between father and son which was never healed.
Our Founding father
Declaration of Independence
In 1776, Franklin was appointed by the Continental Congress to a committee charged with drafting a formal document to justify the colonies' decision of severing political ties with Britain.
The Treaty of Paris
In 1781, Benjamin Franklin was in France. He had been in Paris since 1776, as Minister to France. He had successfully negotiated a treaty of alliance between the French and the united colonies and had secured loans from the French government which helped finance the American revolution against the British.
The Constitution
Although Franklin was eighty-one years old and in generally poor health, he participated as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia with George Washington presiding. Many of the delegates had widely different ideas about how the country should be organized and run, including Franklin.
The Poor Richards Almanac
Franklin, the American inventor, statesman and publisher, achieved success with Poor Richard's Almanac. Almanacs were very popular books in colonial America, offering a mixture of seasonal weather forecasts, practical household hints, puzzles, and other amusements. Poor Richard's Almanac was also popular for its extensive use of wordplay, and some of the witty phrases coined in the work survive in the contemporary American Vernacular
Inventor
Lighting Rod
A lightning rod, simply, is a rod attached to the top of a building, connected to the ground through a wire. The electric charge from lightning strikes the rod and the charge is conducted harmlessly into the ground.
Bifocals
Bifocals are eyeglasses with an upper and lower half, the upper for distance, and the lower for reading. Bifocals are commonly prescribed to people with presbyopia, a condition that Franklin suffered.
Franklin Stove
:The Franklin stove is a metal-lined fireplace named after Benjamin Franklin, who invented it in 1741. It had a hollow baffle near the rear (to transfer more heat from the fire to a room's air) and relied on an "inverted siphon" to draw the fire's hot fumes around the baffle. It was intended to produce more heat and less smoke than an ordinary open fireplace. It is also known as a "circulating stove" or the "Pennsylvania fireplace".
Swim Fins
However, unlike today's foot flippers, these were attached to one's hands. His advocacy for swimming was recognized by his induction into the International Swimming Hall of Fame in 1968.
Mapping the Gulf Stream
Franklin made eight voyages across the Atlantic Ocean (or, as it was known then, the Western Ocean) between the Colonies and Europe. He wondered why journeys eastward were faster than return trips. His curiosity led him to be the first to map the Gulf Stream.