Benjamin Franklin, the U.S. statesman, scientist, and author, was born in Boston, where he attended school for less than a year. He learned the printer's trade, and at seventeen he ran away to Philadelphia. After two years in England (1724–1726) he returned to Pennsylvania, where, prospering in his trade, he began publishing the Pennsylvania Gazette in 1729 and Poor Richard's Almanack in 1732. He had already formed a tradesman's self-improvement club, the Junto, and soon began civic and educational promotions, including the founding of the American Philosophical Society.

Franklin retired from business in 1748, turned to science, and in 1751 published Experiments and Observations on Electricity. The same year he entered the Pennsylvania Assembly, where he was a leader in opposing the influence of Proprietor Thomas Penn and in advocating colonial union. In 1757, as agent for the assembly, he went to England, where, except for eighteen months, he...