I recently read the Franklin biography by Walter Isaacson. He wrote it over a decade ago, but I only just recently got around to it!
Here's a summary.
Youthful Benjamin Franklin was rebellious yet exceptionally intelligent, despite having had little formal schooling.
Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston on January 17, 1705. As a young lad, Franklin showed signs of inventiveness and independence, evident for example in how he approached swimming.
Wanting to swim faster yet recognizing his fingers and toes were keeping him from doing this, Franklin started tinkering with contraptions to help propel him faster through the water. His remedy? Fashioning paddles for his feet for his hands and flippers!
Then enter the church and his parents planned for Franklin to receive an instruction. Yet his father Josiah soon understood that his youngest son wasn't match for the clergy. There are many anecdotes describing youthful Benjamin’s mischievous none and ways – paint him as especially pious.
For example, Franklin thought the grace before each meal was boring his father recited. So after the meat for that winter had been salted and stored in barrel, Franklin asked his father if he would say grace over the barrel, as it'd save time!
Franklin spent only two years enrolled at a local school, where he was taught arithmetic and writing. Subsequently, at only 10 years old, he began work as an apprentice. First he worked then, and under his father with his older brother James, who founded the very first independent paper in Boston, the New England Courant.
Eventually Franklin grew tired of working alongside his brother, chafing at his subordinate part as an apprentice – especially when James was away in England since he had managed the paper on his own.
So even though he was a teenager, Franklin decided to strike out on his own instead.
Benjamin Franklin’s wanderings took him to London and back, but his fantasy above all was to write.
In 1723, when Franklin was merely 17 years old, he boarded a sloop heading for Philadelphia.
There he found a job with Samuel Keimer, Franklin thought “an odd fish” but stayed on with him, although a printer because he loved their extended philosophical discussions. It was during this time that Franklin honed the debating skills that would prove so significant after in his life.
After befriending Pennsylvania governor Sir William Keith, Franklin was presented with the chance to go to London. He stayed there for almost two years working as a printer’s assistant. Yet after a Quaker merchant offered him a position as a clerk in his general store back in Philadelphia, Franklin returned to America and accepted the position.
In writing, despite moving up in business, his real passion lay elsewhere –.
Franklin understood while working at his brother’s printing shop, he wanted to write and had read voraciously. John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress affected him profoundly, and also the novel’s notions of progress and self improvement stayed with him for the rest of his life.
Another favourite tome was Daniel Defoe. Defoe’s work asserted that it was not humane to bar women from the rights and also education that men freely appreciated.
Always working refine his writing skills and to prepare himself, Franklin started regularly reading essays printed in The Spectator, a British daily paper. A few days later, he’d write the essays he’d compare his work with the original, and then read in his own words.
Franklin’s really first efforts at composing were actually printed in his brother’s paper – these hilarious essays were submitted anonymously under the female pseudonym, Mrs. Silence Dogood. For someone his age, Franklin’s early work displayed an uncommon amount of imagination!
After founding a group of likeminded thinkers, Franklin’s notions on community and authorities took root.
Franklin’s life as a shopkeeper was short-lived, and he soon returned to his old position at Samuel Keimer’s printing shop. Yet nothing could sate his growing curiosity and aspiration.
In 1727, Franklin founded a club named the Leather Apron Club, later known as the Junto. Unlike older men Junto members were young tradesmen and artisans who met to discuss current events.
The Junto became a springboard for many of Franklin’s ideas for community enhancement, like a subscription library, a tax for neighborhood constables, a volunteer fire department and a school – which later evolved into the University of Pennsylvania.
Franklin’s thoughts on security and authorities were extreme for the time. In 1747, he conceived of a thought to form a voluntary military, colonial authorities that was independent from Pennsylvania’s. He believed such a corps was needed, given the colony’s inept management of the threat from France and its Indian allies.
Many people supported the initiative – some 10,000 individuals signed up elect Franklin as its colonel, although he turned the position down. to to join the corps and sought Instead, Franklin wrote the corps’ motto and designed insignias for its sections. The corps disbanded in 1748, however, as the risk of war had vanished.
It’s potential that Franklin didn’t recognize how extreme it was for a private group to assume a government function. But, Thomas Penn, the colony’s proprietor, did. He proclaimed Franklin a dangerous man and condemned Franklin’s activities as contempt for the colonial authorities.
Of course, the actual power struggle was still 20 years away. In the meantime, Franklin wasn’t yet exceedingly preoccupied with politics – he was focused, instead, on the natural world.
Franklin’s curiosity led him to make serious scientific discoveries, especially with regards to electricity.
Greek philosopher Plato said the unexamined life was not worth living – and no one embodied than Benjamin Franklin.
Franklin’s insatiable curiosity would make him famous. During a trip to Boston in 1743, a performance which contained some tricks using electricity was noticed by Franklin. At the time, no one fully comprehended how electricity really worked.
Intrigued by what he saw at the performance, Franklin began his own experiments. He soon discovered that there clearly was a link between lightning and electricity – a phenomenon that most folks still considered unnatural.
He conceived of an experiment in which someone would hold an iron pole on a clear hilltop during a thunderstorm, with the goal of bringing a lightning strike – thereby proving not only that a metal thing could draw an electric charge, but also that lightning was really electricity.
Franklin described this groundbreaking experiment in a letter to the Royal Society in London. Word rapidly spread. In May 1752, a group of French scientists had the ability to successfully replicate Franklin’s experiment.
Franklin decided to perform the experiment himself, using not a stick but a metal key string. Flying the kite in a storm, Franklin proved his instinct was right – lightning struck the key! He was subsequently able to transfer the charge from the key to a special jar that stored electricity, called a Leyden jar.
Franklin’s breakthrough resulted in the creation of the lightning rod. Yet his further explorations into electricity brought more acclaim; Franklin was the first person to call linked Leyden jars a “ battery,” for example.
Yet Franklin’s work brought him both condemnation and praise. Religious figures like Abbé Nollet condemned his work as an offense to God, while German philosopher Immanuel Kant called him a “new Prometheus having stolen fire “from the gods.” However, his star was rising. He was rewarded with honorary degrees from both Yale and Harvard.
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OK, ok. You hung in there through all of that. Thank you. As a reward, here's a different photo that's more in tune with the nature of my Blogger blog.
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