Ben Franklin 3

Ben Franklin

When one takes a look at the world in which he currently lives, he often sees it as being normal since it is so slow in changing. When a historian looks at the present, he sees the effects of many events and many wise people. Benjamin Franklin was one of these wise people. His participation in so many different fields changed the world immensely. He can be compared to Leonardo da Vinci, as his versatility is like that of a Renaissance Man. Benjamin Franklin was a Renaissance man of the 1700s. He was a noted politician as well as a respected scholar. Franklin also added as a civic leader and a musician. He was an important inventor and scientist. He helped to define the century.

Benjamin did not have an easy start. Ben Franklin was born in Boston, Massachusetts, on January 17, 1700. He was the fifteenth child in a family of seventeen children. His parents, Josiah and Abiah Franklin, were hard working, devout Puritan Calvinists. Since the Franklins were so poor, Benjamin could not go to school for more than two years. He began an apprenticeship in his brother James’s printing shop. James was the printer for a Boston newspaper, so Ben not only learned how to print but he read everything in the shop. When Ben was seventeen, he left his family and moved to Philadelphia Pennsylvania. Ben was on his own and became very accomplished. He did a little bit of everything.

Ben Franklin as a scientist and inventor is perhaps the most interesting. “Flying a kite in a lightning storm is dumb. But the first person to try that dangerous experiment was brilliant.” Aside from the famous kite experiment, Franklin did more. The direct effect of Franklin’s work with lightning as electricity was his invention of the lightning rod. News spread about his lightning rod, people installed it on most buildings and ships, and he became world famous. In 1740 he altered his heating stove by arranging the flues so that the stove would heat the room twice as well while using only a fraction of the fuel. It was first named the Pennsylvania stove but later named the Franklin stove. The Franklin stove and the lightning rod were not the only things Franklin invented. He had poor vision and needed glasses to read. He got tired of constantly taking them off and putting them back on, so he had two pairs of spectacles cut in half, half of each lens in a single frame, and he had a pair of what we call bifocals today. As a scientist Franklin was one of the first people to chart the Gulf Stream. He also observed and plotted storms.

Franklin was very involved with the city and loved to help people. He achieved much as a civic leader. He organized Junto, a club of aspiring tradesmen. He led the club in sponsoring civic improvements such as a library, fire insurance, a college, hospitals, and more. He started the first public school system in Philadelphia. This was important because this meant everyone could learn. Perhaps this was his way to give to people what he couldn’t have, since he could only afford to go to school for two years. Franklin made effective proposals for a militia. The proposals were for paving, cleaning, and lighting the streets, as well as for a night watch to keep the city safe. His belief for his civic improvements was that men of goodwill, organizing and acting together, could deal effectively with civic concerns.

Ben Franklin was an important statesman and politician. He is among a small group that represents the founding fathers of the U.S.. He is also the “only person to have signed all four of the documents which helped to create the United States: The Declaration of Independence (1776), the Treaty of Alliance, Amity, and Commerce with France (1778), the Treaty of Peace between England, France, and the United States (1782), and the Constitution (1787).” Ben Franklin was never President but was very involved with the men who became President. He outshone John Adams as a diplomat in Europe during the Revolutionary War. Also, he beat John Adams to Paris in 1778 to negotiate the Treaty of Alliance with France. No other American was more involved with the birth of the U.S.. The Treaty of Alliance with France was very important in the American Revolution, it guaranteed the support of soldiers and supplies from France to the U.S., it helped the United States to win the Revolutionary War. Franklin also received most of the credit for the agreement with England that became the peace treaty that ended the Revolutionary War. Franklin was part of a five-man committee including Roger Sherman Adams, Robert Livingston, John Adams, and Thomas Jefferson who wrote the Declaration of Independence. Where would the United States of America be without Ben Franklin?

As if Ben’s scientific and political accomplishments were not enough, he was also a printer. He started at age twelve as an apprentice in his brother James’s shop and by seventeen he was a completely skilled printer qualified for any shop. When he was twenty-two, Franklin had his own printing office in Philadelphia where his most famous publications came from. He had a newspaper called the Pennsylvania Gazette and his annual Poor Richard’s Almanack. His new ideas for publishing, printing cartoons, illustrated news stories, and letters to the editor, set him aside from other printers of his time. Franklin also founded the first circulating library. It was not as if Franklin was a printer and then moved on to the next profession, he was a printer his entire life. He definitely understood the power of the written word.

Franklin was also an economist. His ideas became the “American dream,” the dream of wealth through hard work helped to shape the economy today. He argued for the use of paper money and the importance it had. He “used his printing skills to print paper money, helping to establish the paper currency system in America.” To this day the United States is reminded of Franklin’s contributions because his face is on the one hundred-dollar bill.

Ben Franklin also added in the field of music. He played several instruments, the violin, harp, guitar to name a few. He was very interested in music, which lead to him building his own glass armonica. This interment was played by touching the edge of a spinning glass with a dampened finger. The armonica produced beautiful tones that even appealed to great composers like Mozart and Beethoven.

Ben Franklin was a mild-mannered widely loved, jack of all trades. Of all Franklins accomplishments none stand out more than others because they are all amazing and in different fields. Leonardo da Vinci of the Renaissance Period was labeled a true “Renaissance man.” That was the definition of a man with many talents and who applied those talents to many different fields. Leonardo was a painter, sculptor, architect, scientist, and more. Ben Franklin was a scientist, inventor, economist, musician, politician, civic leader, and printer. His name and reputation will live on forever not only in history books but in the hundreds of inventions, discoveries, improvements, and methods he devised during his eighty four year stay in the fields of politics, science, and humanity. Ben Franklin was a true “Renaissance Man” of his time.

Works Cited

“Ben Franklin: A Man of Many Talents.” Knowledge Adventure 1998 .

“Benjamin Franklin.” Franklin Institute 1999 .

Ketcham, Ralph. “B. Franklin.” Encyclopedia of World Biography. 16 vols. New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1973.

Whitney, David. The American Presidents. Garden City: Book and Music Clubs Inc., 1989.