Benjamin Franklin – A Legendary American Inventor

Less than a couple of centuries after the initial English settlers set foot on the North American continent, the United States gave the world a Renaissance man – Benjamin Franklin. He was a man of modest beginnings who left his impact in science, politics, diplomacy, philosophy and innovation. He was versatile and it is a tribute to his character and his natural intelligence, besides being a testament to his curious and innovative nature. He did not study in an exalted educational institute and there was no big store of wealth to fund his inventions. He was a member of the middle class and pulled himself up by his own bootstraps. He had a wife and an illegitimate son. He became a writer, a pragmatist and a philanthropist. Early Days after Birth in Boston, Massachusetts Franklin once wrote, “We are all born ignorant but we have to work hard to remain stupid.” Benjamin Franklin was born on 6th January 1706. He was one among twelve children born to Josiah Franklin. Josiah earned his living by making wax candles and soap. He had two wives and seventeen children, in all. Money became taught to educate all his children. Bejamin had to drop off from the eighth grade in South Grammar School in Boston as his father could not afford the cost of his education. When he was fifteen, he had to resort to working and not to studying. He had to work at the dock and as a cutler. With minimal schooling, Benjamin still had a lively intellect. He used to read Daniel Defoe as a child. Though his family was a church-going one, Benjamin had no interest in the church or its ministry and when he grew up; he had no vocation for it, despite his father’s insistence. However, traits of Puritanism filtered through in his lifestyle and in his writing, later. He believed in an honest and diligent living. He lived a simple and frugal life with main purpose in life being to serve and obey God. His brother, James, started a newspaper that was printed under the nomenclature of `The New England Courant’. Benjamin assisted him in this enterprise and also wrote some articles, one of which was about how people got sicker after taking inoculation for small pox. When he was seventeen, in 1723, Benjamin ran away and started to seek work in Philadelphia. He found the city bustling with life and he would settle down here for quite some time. Life in Philadelphia and then in London When he arrived in Philadelphia, he did not have much money left to spend. He decided to save up for food, stayed in a boarding house and wrote his famous maxim, “Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.” Philadelphia was then the largest city in the colonies. It offered more opportunity to him than Boston. Benjamin Franklin was able to find work as an apprentice printer. He was noticed by William Keith who was Governor of Pennsylvania who set him up in his own business and sent him to London to purchase rinting equipment for the business. Franklin proceeded to London and though it was not planned; he ended up staying there for a couple of years. He worked with a printer there by the name of Samuel Palmer. While in London, Franklin picked up the art of business etiquette and diplomacy. He printed one of his earliest pamphlets in London titled `A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain’. He forgot about William Keith and his business and arrived back in Philadelphia in 1726. Benjamin started considering himself as a Britisher in Philadelphia. He got into an affair with a woman named Deborah and had a child with her outside of marriage. Franklin came to be known in the city as a master printer and he built his career in his adoptive city. Deborah also proved to be a good business partner. Franklin was in-charge of the print shop while Deborah looked after the books and stationery, along with a general store that they also ran. Benjamin started his `Pennsylvania Gazette’ in 1730. In 1733, he started `Poor Richard’s Almanack’. It was a successful move. He wrote it under the alias of Richard Saunders. It was presented as the work of a man who needed money on account of a nagging wife. The almanac included recipes, weather reports and homilies that were speeches or sermons for moral or spiritual guidance. The Pennsylvania Gazette became the newspaper that was most widely read in all the thirteen colonies of the state. Benjamin Franklin started organising a Junto which was kind of a weekly meeting of artisans and tradesmen who were dedicated towards improving their standard of life. Franklin fashioned these meetings on the model of the coffee houses of London. His friends were also voracious readers who benfited from the writings of others. As time passed by, Franklin printed `Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania’ in 1749. In 1751, he was made the President of the Academy and Charity School of Philadelphia. In 1752, he promoted a textbook called `Elementa Philosophica’ by Samuel Johnson. It promoted a new educational curriculum In 1755, the College of Philadelphia opened. It has to be noted that about one-third of the men who had a big role to play in the creation of the Declaration of Independence were students of this College. Today, it stands as University of Pennsylvania. Benjamin Franklin’s enthusiasm for improvement of life came from the values that he learnt from his Puritan parents. He believed in profitable living. He was the son of a poor candle maker but by mid life; he became quite wealthy that led him to retire from the life of a printmaker and pursue other business interests. His studies and his discoveries in later life built such a reputation that he started to be a respected name in the Courts of Europe. The Inventor “As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this, we should do freely and generously.” – Benjamin Franklin. He was innovative by nature and has been given credit for many inventions of his. The principles of an air-conditioner and the concept of daylight savings time are credited to him. He has also invented the musical instrument, glass harmonica. It was an assortment of glass bowls of different sizes that were arranged on a rotating shaft. The shaft was spun with foot pedals. This invention became popular in USA and Europe.. Even Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven wrote compositions for the glass harmonica. It is surprising that not many composers wrote for this instrument and its popularity has waned down the ages. Franklin also invented a special kind of stove that offered more efficiency and safety in those homes that lacked central heating. Most fireplaces were quite inefficient in colonial homes as the heat they produced through burning wood escaped upwards with the chimney. The stove designed by Franklin enclosed the fire within a box of cast iron and it could be kept in the centre of the room for heating purposes. Heat was radiated from all four sides of that box and adjustments could be made to the flow of air and the rate at which the wood would burn could also be controlled. The enclosure of the flames reduced the risk of stray sparks igniting a fire within the house. Franklin was also interested in the study of electricity while doing work in his print shop. He made a public proposal to fly a kite (Leonardo da Vinci was one of the earliest inventors of flying kites) in a storm to prove that lightning was electricity in its most intense form. He took care not to get struck by the lightning and conducted his experiment in 1752. In that process, he also invented the lightning rod which would protect buildings from getting struck by lightning based on a theory that if a metal rod were attached to the top of a building and wired with a cable to the ground, the rod would attract the lightning from storm clouds and avoiding damage. He conducted these experiments in his own home and found that his theories were correct. Lightning rods were then installed in a big way in the Academy of Philadelphia and the State House. The news spread to Europe and French cathedrals showed lot of interest in this device. Benjamin Franklin received accolades as the world became exposed to his achievements. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1756 and he was one of the earliest and few Americans to be recognized in this way. He introduced these words to the English dictionary – battery, charge, positive and negative elements. He never bothered to apply for patents for most of his inventions. It sourced to his principle that inventors should be happy to benefit society with their creations and such inventions should be shared freely with others. Colonial Politics Benjamin Franklin always thought that being rebellious against tyrants is being obedient to God. As he grew up in life, Franklin showed much interest in every facet of life, ranging from science to education and from public service to politics. In the field of politics, he had acute insights and also had problem solving skills. His interest in politics provided him a base for a complicated and revolutionary turn in his career. In 1748, he was made a Councilman for the Philadelphia Government. The next year, he was made a Justice of the Peace. Two years later, he was elected to serve in the Pennsylvania Assembly. He began to defend the rights of the elected representatives as a leader in the Quaker Political Party which maintained the power of the Penn family. This Party were firmly on the side of the British and Britain had control of the land that was east of the Mississippi River. Such loyalty made him flourish as he was soon made the Deputy Post Master General of British North America. While at that post, he made sure that he improved the postal system. He noticed that during his days, the mail service was unstable. Coastal routes were the most reliable means of mail delivery because the roads that were connecting to the colonies were not in good condition. It was taking as long as a fortnight for a letter sent from New York City to Philadelphia. The postmen who were handed over these letters would take breaks at inns, taverns and coffee houses. He made a tour of all the colonial post offices. He then authorised the placement of milestones along the main roads after he surveyed the routes. He established direct routes between the colonies so that the mail would reach more efficiently. He started the weekly mail wagon that had to travel both during the day and night to improve the speed of mail delivery, particularly between New York City and Philadelphia. He organised postal rates based on weight and distance and standardised it throughout the thirteen colonies. He created a mail system with roads that ran from Maine to Florida. He served in this position till 1774. He then started to realise that there were flaws in the social and governmental structure run by the British. Corruption was spreading within political circles. Franklin the American When Benjamin Franklin started disagreeing with the British way of governance and administration, he was looked upon as a troublemaker. Franklin started realising that the colonists and the British could not exist peacefully for long. In the minds, the battle of independence had already begun. There was some bloodshed, too, at Concord and Lexington in Massachusetts State. When Franklin was elected by the Pennsylvania Assembly to the Second Continental Congress, he automatically became part of the Committee of Five who was assigned to write the Declaration of Independence in June 1776. Franklin was suffering with a case of gout during that period. The bulk of the writing responsibility fell on the shoulders of Thomas Jefferson. There was a risk that should the British stand firm, all members of this Committee were to be hanged and executed. Things worked out differently as on 4th July of 1776, USA got its independence and Franklin was among the heroes of that struggle. Later, in December of that year, Franklin was sent to France to serve as a Commissioner for the United States. He travelled with his grandson, William Temple Franklin. The French had heard about Franklin’s scientific experiments and they also welcomed his wit. Many French elite started befriending him. Franklin slowly started becoming the voice of the conscience of the New World. He said, “Slavery is such an atrocious debasement of human nature, that its very extirpation (meaning slow elimination), if not performed with solicitous care, may sometimes open a source of serious evils.” The country’s Declaration of Independence affirmed the equality of all races and cultures. The irony of this declaration was both Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson were themselves owner of slaves for over four decades. Franklin even became critical when some slaves ran off to join the British Army during the colonial period. The dichotomy ws that Franklin never attempted to recapture them. In those times, the loss of a slave meant almost a loss of property. He owned seven slaves, among them a husband and wife, who worked well but he decided to sell them because he did not like Negro servants. As time went on, his views on slavery evolved. He was very keen on Pennsylvania passing laws to oppose slavery. King George III refused to pass such laws and his attempt to bring an end to slavery, failed. In partnership with Father Benjamin Rush, Franklin founded the First Abolition Society in Pennsylvania. He achieved success eventually in 1787 when he was made the President of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the abolition of Slavery and the Relief of Free Negroes Unlawfully Held in Bondage. This was the last major issue he took part in as his health started deteriorating with gout and kidney problems. He died on 17th April 1790. His funeral was attended by over twenty thousand mourners in Philadelphia. He had written an epitaph for himself wich read, “Here lies the bosy of B. Franklin – Printer like the cover of an old book; its contents torn out and script of its lettering and gilding, food for worms. His works shall not be wholly lost for it will as per his belief appear once more in a new and more perfect edition, corrected and amended by the Author.” During his lifetime, Benjamin Franklin write, “I have lived, Sir, a long time and the longer I live; the more convincing proofs I see of this truth – that God governs in the affairs of men.” Before he died, Franklin was elected as the Sixth President of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania. It was a post similar to that of a Governor. It was in that capacity that he played host to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 which was held in Philadelphia. Benjamin Franklin was the only Founding Father to sign all four major documents such as the Declaration of Independence, the Treat of Paris, the Treaty of Alliance with the French and the United States Constitution. Franklin proposed daily prayers in Philadelphia in the Executive Council. He reminded the dekegates that when he conflict with Britain started, the leaders of the nation prayed for divine protection on a daily basis. He asked, “Have we now forgotten that Powerful Friend? Or do we imagine that we no longer need His assistance? If a sparrow can’t fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without his aid?” This idea was not welcome and his motion was opposed. It goes to show the Great Nation under God was already turning away from Divine help. Benjamin Franklin believed passionately in morality and virtue and felt that is was merely by conducting our lives according to principles of goodness that a man could prosper. He explained, “I never doubted in the existence of the Deity; that the most acceptable service of God was the doing of good to man; that our souls are immortal and that all crimes would be punished and virtue rewarded, either here or in the Hereafter.” He believed in ethics and not in man-made dogmas and doctrines. It was with this philosophy that he vehemently supported religious tolerance. Puritan values formed his growing ideals, early in life and he remained a powerful advocate for work, education, temperance , frugality, charity and concern for the community. From his young days, he forged his own destiny when he left Boston for Philadelphia and created a profitable career for himself as a printer and civic leader. He was probably the first American citizen who was comfortable in other environments of different countries, leaving an impact with his American identity, particularly in Europe. He always hoped that ultimately; goodness shall triumph so that all men and women who were created equal could live together in harmony and freedom. *******