Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin (An A+ Essays Original Paper, written by WeirdHTML)

Benjamin Franklin was one of the first and most famous scientists in America. He was a man of many talents and interests. Franklin was always curios about they way things work, and he always tried to find ways to make them work better. Even though he started out as a published, he was always interested in science. However this interest soon became a passion to Franklin. He even retired from his publishing business to work in a laboratory with his mostly homemade equipment. Throughout his life Benjamin Franklin made many important discoveries and theories which greatly influenced future scientists and inventors.

Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston Massachusetts, on January 17, 1706. He was the seventh child in his family. Franklin started going to school when he was ten, and became an apprentice to his older brother who owned a printing firm in Philadelphia. He quickly became well known throughout the American colonies as the publisher of the Pennsylvania Gazette, a newspaper, and of Poor Richard's Almanac, an annual compilation of information and witticisms (Grolier 90). Even though he did not attend school for a long time, Franklin began interested in science. He was particularly interested in electricity. Even though there were already many experiments being conducted in this field, none of them had fully explained this phenomenon.

Franklin soon left his printing business and built a laboratory to spend more time studying electricity. In the subsequent decade he plunged into his scientific investigations and into provincial politics with equal zest (Morris 15). While he was in Boston, he met Dr. Spence who had arrived from Scotland and showed Franklin several experiments. They were not perfectly performed since Dr. Spence was not an expert, but they did surprise and interest Franklin. Some time later he had received a glass tube and some information on how to perform experiments with it. Franklin soon became practical in performing such experiments, and also invented some of his own. People from all over the town even came to witness them.

Benjamin Franklin developed a theory that every object had an "electrical fluid". He believed that some objects had too much of this fluid, while others did not. By putting his theories together, he invented the electrical battery. It was made out...

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... books located on high shelves. It was a wooden pole with a grasping claw at the end.

A list of Benjamin Franklin's inventions reveals a man of many talents and interests. He was a brilliant scientist and his ingenuity brought us many inventions we are still using today. Franklin was always curious to find out how different things worked, and always tried to find some way of making them work better. Other famous scientists like Thomas A. Edison and Alexander Graham Bell followed his footsteps and created many new inventions which made people's lives easier and more enjoyable.

Works Cited

1. Franklin, Benjamin. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. New York: Buccaneer Books Inc., 1984.

2. Van Doren, Carl. Benjamin Franklin. New York: Viking Penguin, 1991.

3. Birch, Beverly and Robin Bell Corfield. Benjamin Franklin's Adventures with Electricity. New York: Baron's Educational Series, Inc., 1998.

4. The Grolier Library of North American Biographies. Connecticut: Grolier Educational Corporation, 1994.

5. Bruno, Leonard. Science and Technology Breakthroughs. Michigan: Gale Group, 1998.

6. Morris, Richard. Seven Who Shaped Our Destiny. New York: Harper Torchbooks, 1973.