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Benjamin Franklin (Franklin, Benjamin - Scientist): Philadelphia Society
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Benjamin Franklin (Franklin, Benjamin - Scientist) also shows up in the Retriever categories:
Benjamin Franklin (Franklin, Benjamin - Early) , and more.
Benjamin Franklin (Franklin, Benjamin - Early) , and more.
Born in what was then the British colony of Boston, Massachusetts, on January17, 1706, Franklin was the fifteenth of seventeen children and received onlytwo years of a formal education. He started working in his father's candlemaking shop at the age of ten and later became an apprentice printer, working for his brother James. As a printer he developed a love for books, from whichhe educated himself. He spent two years in London, where he learned more about printing, and returned to Philadelphia in 1726. There he established the Pennsylvania Gazette and Poor Richard's Almanack, which earned him a tidy income. Franklin's first major invention, around 1740, was the Pennsylvania fireplace, which eventually became known as the Franklin stove.
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In June of 1752, Franklin was in Philadelphia, waiting for the steeple on top of Christ Church to be completed for his experiment (the steeple would act as the "lightning rod"). He grew impatient, and decided that a kite would be able to get close to the storm clouds just as well. Ben needed to figure out what he would use to attract an electrical charge; he decided on a metal key, and attached it to the kite. Then he tied the kite string to an insulating silk ribbon for the knuckles of his hand. Even though this was a very dangerous experiment, (you can see what our lightning rod at the top of the page looks like after getting struck), some people believe that Ben wasn't injured because he didn't conduct his test during the worst part of the storm. At the first sign of the key receiving an electrical charge from the air, Franklin knew that lightning was a form of electricity.
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In addition to science, Franklin had many interests. He invented bifocals, a new ship anchor, a wood stove, an armchair that could be turned into library steps, and many other things. He ... started the first public library in America and supported education for everyone, including women and African-Americans. He helped found the American Philosophical Society in 1744, an organization whose members shared new information of all kinds, especially about the natural world. Beginning in 1732 he achieved great success with Poor Richard’s Almanack, a yearly publication that became the most popular reading material in the colonies after the Bible. The mottoes in the almanac, proverbs such as “Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise,” expressed his ideas about improving oneself.
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The Franklin Institute is currently hosting Tutankhamun And The Golden Age of The Pharaohs, in the Mandell Center of The Franklin Institute Science Museum. The exhibit began its United States Tour in Los Angeles, CA, and went to Fort Lauderdale, FL, and Chicago, IL, before coming to Philadelphia for its final American appearance. When the exhibit leaves Philadelphia on September 30, 2007, it will travel to London, England. The current exhibit is nearly twice the size of the original Tutankhamun exhibit of the 1970s, and contains 50 objects directly from Tut's tomb, as well as nearly 70 object from the tombs of his ancestors in The Valley of the Kings. The current show ... features a CAT Scan that reveals what the Boy King may have looked like.[1]
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Franklin’s second child, Francis Folger Franklin, died at age 4 from smallpox. His youngest child, Sarah (Sally), married Richard Bache (against her father’s advice), and had seven children. She ... was active in the Revolution, supervising the sewing of 2,200 shirts for American soldiers. She took care of Franklin upon his return to Philadelphia from Paris, and after he died, sold the diamonds from a miniature portrait of Louis XVI to travel to London for the first time. In 1794 the Bache family moved to a farm outside of Philadelphia on the Delaware River, and Sally died in 1808.
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Because of Benjamin Franklin's work with the lightning rod, he received the Copley Medal from the Royal Society on London in 1753. Franklin ... conducted other experiments in meteorology including noting that storms do not always follow the prevailing winds and that evaporation helps in the cooling process.
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