Having noticed that a sharp iron needle conducted electricity away from a charged metal sphere, he theorized that such a design could be useful:. Would not these pointed rods probably draw the electrical fire silently out of a cloud before it came nigh enough to strike, and thereby secure us from that most sudden and terrible mischief! Learn more about the lightning rod. Like most of us, Franklin found that his eyesight was getting worse as he got older, and he grew both near-sighted and far-sighted.
He had the lenses from his two pairs of glasses - one for reading and one for distance - sliced in half horizontally and then remade into a single pair, with the lens for distance at the top and the one for reading at the bottom.
An avid swimmer, Franklin was just 11 years old when he invented swimming fins—two oval pieces of wood that, when grasped in the hands, provided extra thrust through the water. In swimming, I pushed the edges of these forward and I struck the water with their flat surfaces as I drew them back. I remember I swam faster by means of these [palettes], but they fatigued my wrists. In , Franklin—perhaps fed up with the cold Pennsylvania winters—invented a better way to heat rooms.
The Franklin stove, as it came to be called, was a metal-lined fireplace designed to stand a few inches away from the chimney. A hollow baffle at the rear let heat from the fire mix with the air more quickly, and an inverted siphon helped to extract more heat. In , in his final significant act of public service, he was a delegate to the convention that produced the U.
Benjamin Franklin was born on January 17, , in colonial Boston. His father, Josiah Franklin , a native of England, was a candle and soap maker who married twice and had 17 children. In , at age 12, he was apprenticed to his older brother James, a Boston printer.
By age 16, Franklin was contributing essays under the pseudonym Silence Dogood to a newspaper published by his brother. At age 17, Franklin ran away from his apprenticeship to Philadelphia, where he found work as a printer.
In late , he traveled to London, England, and again found employment in the printing business. Benjamin Franklin returned to Philadelphia in , and two years later opened a printing shop. The business became highly successful producing a range of materials, including government pamphlets, books and currency.
In , Franklin became the owner and publisher of a colonial newspaper, the Pennsylvania Gazette , which proved popular—and to which he contributed much of the content, often using pseudonyms. In , Franklin began living with Deborah Read c. Franklin and Read had a son, Francis Folger Franklin , who died of smallpox at age 4, and a daughter, Sarah Franklin Bache Franklin had another son, William Franklin c.
William Franklin served as the last colonial governor of New Jersey , from to , and remained loyal to the British during the American Revolution. He died in exile in England. Franklin also organized the Pennsylvania militia, raised funds to build a city hospital and spearheaded a program to pave and light city streets.
Additionally, Franklin was instrumental in the creation of the Academy of Philadelphia, a college which opened in and became known as the University of Pennsylvania in Franklin also was a key figure in the colonial postal system. In , the British appointed him postmaster of Philadelphia, and he went on to become, in , joint postmaster general for all the American colonies. In this role he instituted various measures to improve mail service; however, the British dismissed him from the job in because he was deemed too sympathetic to colonial interests.
In July , the Continental Congress appointed Franklin the first postmaster general of the United States, giving him authority over all post offices from Massachusetts to Georgia. He held this position until November , when he was succeeded by his son-in-law.
The first U. In , Franklin, then 42 years old, had expanded his printing business throughout the colonies and become successful enough to stop working. Retirement allowed him to concentrate on public service and also pursue more fully his longtime interest in science.
In the s, he conducted experiments that contributed to the understanding of electricity, and invented the lightning rod, which protected buildings from fires caused by lightning. In , he conducted his famous kite experiment and demonstrated that lightning is electricity. Franklin also coined a number of electricity-related terms, including battery, charge and conductor.
Volcanoes The year was Europe had been wallowing in a dense fog for months. The sun was unable to penetrate the thick cloud layer and there was hardly a summer at all that year. The first snow of the winter, unable to melt, had frozen to the ground, and every snow since had only accumulated.
Franklin, in France at the time, had witnessed the bizarre fog. But for Franklin, the fog had to have a rational explanation.
It was a puzzle to be solved. The eruptions released tons of toxic gases into the atmosphere. The change in atmosphere, combined with what had already been an unusually warm summer, caused major weather shifts in the weather throughout Europe and North America for months. Silkworms Silk dresses were in vogue throughout Europe and the colonies, and the finest silk came from Asia.
But Benjamin Franklin wanted to make silk right here at home. He figured that if the colonists succeeded, they could make money and have inexpensive access to fine silk. The process of making silk, however, is no easy task. Silk comes from the larvae of a moth called the Bombyx mori. This moth can neither see nor fly, and it lays about eggs in only a few days before dying. These eggs produce about 30, worms, which may only be kept alive by a diet of the ever-so-slightly wilted leaves of the White Mulberry Tree, which is only found in Asia.
The American Philosophical Society offered cash prizes for colonists who could succeed in making silk. Sadly, the White Mulberry tree did not flourish in the colonies and the process of making silk was just too laborious for the colonists—not to mention the silkworms. Storms Never one to miss a lunar eclipse, Franklin set himself up one evening in , ready to watch his favorite nighttime show.
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