Benjamin Franklin
1706-1790
American Scientist, Inventor and Statesman
Benjamin Franklin is one of the best known Americans of the eighteenth century. He made significant contributions to a number of fields, including playing a major role in the founding of the United States as an independent nation. In science and technology, he is remembered for his work in the theory of electricity and his many practical inventions.
Franklin was the eighth of ten children in a poor family in Boston. He educated himself through his extensive reading. Initially working for his brother on a Boston newspaper, at 17 he went to Philadelphia, where he worked as a printer, eventually buying his own press. He was so successful that he was able to retire at the age of 42. His financial security resulted from the success of his newspaper, The Pennsylvania Gazette, and the popularity of Poor Richard's Almanack, his book of common sense advice and commentary. Retirement allowed him to concentrate on his scientific interests and on political and diplomatic responsibilities.
His scientific studies centered on the new field of electricity, to which he made both theoretical and experimental contributions. He unified the disparate ideas and experimental information that had accumulated into a new theoretical base and provided ideas that proved to be fertile for subsequent research. In 1747 he undertook a series of ingenious experiments that provided him with a thorough understanding of electrical phenomena. He proposed that lightning was the same as electricity, leading to his famous experiment in which lightening was drawn from the sky via a kite into an apparatus that confirmed that it was electrical in nature. He proposed that electricity is a single electrical "fluid" (which we now know to be electrons) that may be transferred between bodies. He further proposed that the total quantity of this "fluid" is always conserved, a concept known as the conservation of electrical charge that is now regarded as one of the fundamental natural laws.
Benjamin Franklin. (Library of Congress. Reproduced with permission.)He called a body "positive" when it contains an excess of electrical fluid, and "negative" when there is a deficiency of fluid. This and related terminology that Franklin developed form the basis of the terminology still in use today. He also noted the relationship between electricity and magnetism and attempted to magnetize an object using electricity. His scientific interests also included heat absorption, the Gulf Stream, ship design, and the relationship between sweating and body temperature.
Franklin's ingenuity was also evident in a number of practical inventions. The Franklin stove provides heat much more efficiently than a fireplace. Nearsighted and farsighted individuals should be grateful to him for the invention of bifocal eyeglasses. His work with lightning led to his invention of the lightning rod, credited with reducing the number of buildings destroyed by lightning.
The notoriety resulting from Franklin's work with electricity facilitated his political and diplomatic efforts. After serving the colony of Pennsylvania in a variety of ways, he lived in England for 15 years as the chief spokesman for the American colonies. He helped write the Declaration of Independence and then spent almostten years in France obtaining support for the revolution of the colonies. He helped write the treaty with Britain that gave the colonies their independence. Subsequently he served as President of Pennsylvania and participated in the Second Continental Congress and the Constitutional Convention.
Benjamin Franklin was well known and appreciated in Europe as well as in America. He was the epitome of American independence, which served as a symbol for efforts to gain democratic government throughout the world. He was elected to England's Royal Society and the French Academy of Sciences and received honorary degrees from the University of St. Andrews and from Oxford University.
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