Bejamin Franklin -- A Life Of A Great Man

Benjamin Franklin During the period after America's "birth" there were many incredible people but none more so than Benjamin Franklin. Ben is considered one of America's greatest citizens. He accomplished many things in his lifetime; he was a scientist, an inventor, a politician, a printer, a philosopher, a musician, and an economist. In the 1700s, a scientist was someone who thought about the way things work and tried to figure out ways to make things work better. Every time Ben Franklin saw a question and tried to answer it, he was a scientist. Ben is most famous for his questions about electricity, but he also experimented with many other ideas in nature.

Ben did many studies on electricity, not just lightning. Franklin received an electricity tube from his friend Peter Collinson and began to play around with it, performing a vast amount of experiments (FISM). However, it is Ben's interest in lightning that is best remembered. Ben hypothesized that lightning was an electrical current.

To test his theory he needed to see whether or not lightning would pass through metal. So he attached a metal key to a kite and flew it in a storm. His experiment proved that lightning was a stream of electrified air, known as plasma (Lemay) Ben realized that lightning was immensely powerful, so he invented the lightning rod. After Franklin did many studies with lightning and electricity, he realized it was a very powerful force. It was this that motivated him to invent the lightning rod.

The lightning rod is a piece of metal attached to a building, house, boat, etc. When lightning strikes the building the rod will attract it and channel the electricity down to the ground where it will do much less damage. This invention has help protect buildings of today greatly. In 1743, Ben Franklin was watching a storm move in. He wondered why the storms were moving the opposite direction from where the wind was blowing. Franklin believed that a storm course could be plotted.

Ben chased the storm on horseback ¾ of a mile to see how it worked. He later printed weather forecasts in his almanac (FISM). In his travels across the Atlantic Ocean he became interested in ocean currents and shipbuilding. He measured temperatures on each of his eight trips to Europe and eventually plotted a Gulf Stream. Ben was one of the first people to work on gulf streams (FISM). In November...

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... seventeen, he was a fully skilled printer able to work in any print shop. With this skill, Ben was able to leave Boston and find work in both Philadelphia and London. In 1728, at the age of twenty-two, Franklin opened his own printing office in Philadelphia. He published a newspaper called The Pennsylvania Gazette and his annual Poor Richard's Almanac (Esmond). He published cartoons and illustrated news stories, and letters to the editor. He believed in the power of the press, using his printing press as a way to bring the news to all people.

He used cartoons and pictures so that everyone could understand the news, especially to people who had not learned to read. In 1731, Franklin set up the first ever circulating library where people could checkout books so they could read even if they couldn't afford to buy books (FISM). Ben Franklin had many other ideas about our nation. His essays and books about the economy help shape it to what it is today, he strictly believed in hard work. There was no shortage of that in his life; Benjamin Franklin is clearly one of America's greatest citizens. We honor him as one of our founding fathers and his face is on the one hundred-dollar bill.