LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Benjamin Franklin (Franklin, Benjamin - Early)
built 607 days ago
Benjamin Franklin (Franklin, Benjamin - Early) also shows up in the Retriever categories:
Benjamin Franklin (Franklin, Benjamin - Scientist) , and more.
Benjamin Franklin (Franklin, Benjamin - Scientist) , and more.
Benjamin Franklin was a genius, recognized as such at home and abroad in his own time and still today. George Washington referred to him as "that great philosopher." Thomas Jefferson called him "the greatest man of the age and country in which he lived." John Adams said of him: "Franklin had a great genius, original, sagacious, and inventive, capable of discoveries in science no less than of improvements in the fine arts and the mechanical arts....His reputation was more universal than that of Leibnitz or Newton, Frederick or Voltaire." Much of Franklin's reputation was a result of his phenomenal demonstration of capturing lightning from the sky and bringing it safely to the ground without harming people or property. Before this, according to Adams, grown men would hide under their beds in superstitious fear during storms of lightning and thunder.
Source:
Born 1706 in Boston, Benjamin Franklin was the 15th of his father's 17 children. He went to school as a child with the intent of becoming a minister, as his father, Josiah, intended. However, that idea was dropped after Franklin showed a keen interest in reading and writing. He was apprenticed to his brother, James at a young age, but after fighting with his brother he quit the job and moved to Philadelphia, where he worked for a man named Samuel Keimer. After befriending some prominent political figures, including the royal Governor, Franklin left for England, where he spent 18 months working for a printer with his friend James Ralph, with whom he later became estranged. Shortly after returning to America in 1726, Franklin formed a debating club called the Junto.
Source:
Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, one of the foundational texts of American literature, has undergone a variety of published incarnations since Franklin's creation of the work in 1771. In his opening paragraph, the author introduces the twofold nature of his text, commenting first that it will be a means for his son William "to know the Circumstances of my Life" but ... that "my Posterity … may find … fit to be imitated" some of Franklin's means of "having emerg'd from the Poverty and Obscurity in which I was born & bred, to a State of Affluence & some Degree of Reputation in the World." More than simply a memoir, the Autobiography presents Franklin's conscious recognition of his place in history; more broadly, it serves as an illustration of the author's identification with the new republic—the self-made man in the land of self-made men—and his desire to share that dream and achievement with his countrymen.
Source:
In Philadelphia, Benjamin Franklin found employment with Samuel Keimer, an eccentric printer just beginning business. The young printer soon attracted the notice of Sir William Keith, Governor of Pennsylvania, who promised to set him up in his own business. However, the deal was that Benjamin had to go to London first to buy a printing press. The Governor promised to send a letter of credit to London, but he broke his word, and Benjamin Franklin was obliged to remain in London nearly two years working for his fare home.
Source:
Benjamin Franklin wrote The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin over a period of twenty years. It covers his life only until 1758, before his career as a diplomat. He began writing in 1771 and wrote the last two sections between 1788 and 1790, when illness forced him to put the work aside. Although the first part of the book was published in 1791, the entire work was not published until 1868.
Source:
Born in Boston and one of fifteen children, Benjamin Franklin was apprenticed to his brother, a printer, when he was twelve. Five years later, he abruptly left his brother's newspaper and went to Philadelphia, where he taught himself several languages and, by the time he was twenty-four, edited the Pennsylvania Gazette and published it in his own printing shop. Shortly thereafter he published Poor Richard's Almanac, a compilation of often ironic meditations on and maxims for achieving wealth, among other topics. When he retired in his early forties, he counted among his accomplishments the founding of a library, the invention of a stove, and the subscription to an academy that later became the University of Pennsylvania. Upon retirement Franklin began to study the natural sciences, publishing accounts of his experiments with electricity in London in 1751. Franklin spent the rest of his life as a diplomat, in London, Paris, and Philadelphia.
Source:
MORE ABOUT
Benjamin Franklin (Franklin, Benjamin - Early)