Ben Eventually Came Back to Philadelphia

On January 17, 1706, Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston. He was the tenth of 17 children. His dad was Josiah Franklin, a candle and soap maker. Josiah emigrated from England and with his first wife had 7 children. His mother was Abiah Folger, Josiah's second wife. His dad wanted him to be a clergy, but he was not able to afford it. As a kid, Benjamin loved to read and write. When Ben was a kid he worked for his brother James and made pamphlets and sold them on the streets.

Benjamin wanted to be a sailor, but his dad made him work for his brother. When Benjamin was 15, his brother started the New England Courant. Benjamin Franklin wanted to write for the paper, but he knew his brother wouldn't let him. So at night Ben started to write letters and sign them with the name of a fictional widow, Silence Dogood. Dogood was filled with advice and was very critical of the world around her, especially regarding the treatment of women. At night, Ben would sneak the letters under the door of the print shop so that nobody knew who wrote the work.

Ben didn't like working for his brother and wanted to do something else. So he decided to run away at the age of 17. Running away was illegal. In early America, everyone had a place in society and runaways didn't fit anywhere. He left Boston with very little money in his pockets. Unable to find work in New York, he went to Philadelphia where he found work in Samuel Keimer 's printing house as an apprentice printer. He did so well that the Governor of Pennsylvania promised to set him up his own business if young Franklin went to London to buy fonts and printing equipment. Franklin went to London, but the governor reneged on his promise and Benjamin had to spend several months in England.

Ben eventually came back to Philadelphia and set up a printing business. He was very successful and people began noticing how talented he was. He bought a newspaper company and even starting to print out his own almanac. Franklin eventually got involved in civic contributions during the 1730s and 1740s. He helped launch projects for the streets of Philadelphia to pave, clean and light them. He also began to call for environmental clean up. Later on he also began experimenting with electricity. Politics became more of an active interest for Franklin in the 1750s. After the 1950s is where Benjamin Franklin worked as a diplomat and worked for independence. He eventually helped write the declaration of independence and became a delegate to the constitutional convention. Benjamin Franklin died on the night of 17 April 1790 at 11:00. He was 84 when he died. Four days later, a funeral procession began at the State House and he was buried in the cemetery of the Christ Church. Some 20,000 people paid their respects, including officials, militias, scientists, traders, bankers, teachers, printers, and others whose lives were touched by the extraordinary character and spirit of Benjamin Franklin.

Benjamin Franklin has had a big impact on America. Franklin had more to do than anyone else with the founding of the American Republic. As a representative of the United States in London, he helped persuade Parliament to abolish taxes under the Stamp Act, giving America an additional decade to prepare for armed conflict with Britain. He was also on the committee to draft the Declaration of Independence that eventually named Thomas Jefferson. He went to France to secure military assistance and a formal alliance without which America would probably not have won the Revolutionary War. He helped to negotiate peace with Great Britain. He also made a compromise that helped to prevent the collapse of the Constitutional Convention, and it was he who moved the Constitution to be adopted. Without his efforts, America would not have gotten their independence.

Franklin was a radical late-blooming. He brokered the sale of some slaves as a sideline to his general store during his thirties. His wife and he owned two slaves. In 1758, at the age of 52, he proposed the establishment of the first black school in Philadelphia. When he was 70, he gave up his support for the British Empire and committed himself to the American Revolution. The abolitionist movement was launched by Philadelphia Quakers by organizing the Pennsylvania Society to promote the abolition of slavery, but its activities stopped during the revolution. In 1787, when Franklin became its president at 81, this pioneering society revived. He expressed his support for the ideals of the French revolution two years later.
Franklin was renowned for his charm and tact, which allowed him to make the most of people, but he still had detractors. While he was generous with his friends and adopted families, Franklin could not be sensitive to his own. He ignored the pleas of his dying wife, Deborah, whom he had not seen in nearly a dozen years, to return home from Britain, where he represented colonial interests in America. He refused to approve the proposed marriage of his daughter to the man she loved. During the American Revolution, the decision of his son to stand with Britain provoked a bitter break that never cured.

Franklin, more than anyone else, linked the emerging international freedom movements. James Madison recalled that he never spent half an hour in his company without any observations or anecdotes worth remembering. Franklin had dined with Adam Smith, the author of Wealth of Nations. The Scottish philosopher David Hume told Franklin: America sent us a lot of good stuff, gold, silver, sugar, tobacco, indigo. But you are the first philosopher and indeed the first great man of letters to whom we are committed. Edmund Burke, who opposed the war against America in Britain, called Franklin a friend of the human race. Franklin was very well renowned and looked up upon by many people.

Franklin also had a major impact on Electricity. He determined that there were two kinds of charges, which he called positive and negative.He determined that two types of charges were present, which he called positive and negative. In June 1752, he climbed the hill of Philadelphia, flew a silk kite during a thunderstorm, touched one knuckle to a key on the wet string, and felt an electric shock. Franklin published Experiments and Observations on Electricity, and it was translated into French, German, Italian, and Latin. With an old key, a silk thread, some sealing-wax, and a sheet of paper, he discovered the identity of lightning and electricity. He was awarded honorary degrees by Harvard and Yale Universities for his discoveries and he was even elected a Fellow of the English Royal Society and the French Acad?©mie des Sciences. Benjamin Franklin's discovery of electricity influenced many people in the future to develop and discover other things about electricity.

The lighting rod was the most spectacular, but it was just one of Franklin's many transformative inventions. The majority of inventions are improvements on prior art, but there was nothing to capture lightning before Franklin's rod. It was totally new and original, without precursors or predecessors. And what makes this Franklin invention even more monumental is that despite the great technological advances, today's lightning rod is essentially the same as when it was invented by Franklin.

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