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An Analysis on Benjamin Franklin Essay example

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An Analysis on Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin was born on January 17, 1706, in Boston. His father, Josiah Franklin, who was a tallow chandler, had seventeen children; Benjamin was the fifteenth child and the tenth son. His mother, Abiah Folger, was his father’s second wife. After he went to grammar school from age eight to ten, Benjamin started working at his father’s business. He didn’t like the work very much, however, and so he began to work for a cutler. When he was just thirteen, he became an apprentice to his brother James, who had just returned from England with a new printing press. Benjamin learned the printing trade, but in his spare time he tried to improve his education. In 1721 his brother …show more content…

It was known for its witty style and practical selection of news. In 1730 he married Deborah Read, a Philadelphia woman whom he had known before his trip to England.

Franklin was involved in many well-known public projects. In 1731 he founded what was probably the first public library in America, chartered in 1742 as the Philadelphia Library. He first published Poor Richard’s Almanack in 1732, under the pen name Richard Saunders. This volume quickly gained a reputation for its practical wisdom. In 1736 Franklin became clerk of the Pennsylvania General Assembly and the next year he became the deputy postmaster of Philadelphia. About this time, he organized the first fire company in that city and introduced methods and ideas for the improvement of street paving and lighting. Always interested in scientific studies, he devised a means to correct undue smoking of chimneys and invented, around 1744, the Franklin stove, which furnished greater heat with a reduced consumption of fuel.

In 1747 Franklin began his electrical experiments with a simple object that he had received from Peter Collinson in England. He advanced a tenable theory of the Leyden jar, supported the hypothesis that lightning is an electrical phenomenon, and proposed an effective method of demonstrating this fact. His plan was published in London and

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