History Atlas

Benjamin Franklin

Founding Father, Inventor, and Sage of the Enlightenment · 17 January 1706, Boston, Province of Massachusetts Bay - 17 April 1790, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States

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American polymath who rose from runaway printer's apprentice to become a leading scientist, inventor, diplomat, and Founding Father. His electrical experiments, his role in drafting the Declaration of Independence and securing the French alliance, and his embodiment of self-made American ingenuity made him the most famous American of his century.

Life and legacy

Benjamin Franklin was born on 17 January 1706 on Milk Street in Boston, the fifteenth of seventeen children of Josiah Franklin, a candle and soap maker. With only two years of formal schooling, Franklin was apprenticed at twelve to his older brother James, a printer, where he taught himself to write by imitating the style of The Spectator. At seventeen he ran away to Philadelphia with little more than the clothes on his back, and within a decade had built a thriving printing business, publishing The Pennsylvania Gazette and the enormously popular Poor Richard's Almanack under the pseudonym "Richard Saunders."

Franklin's scientific work earned him international fame. His experiments with electricity in the late 1740s and early 1750s - culminating in his demonstration that lightning is electrical in nature - were among the most celebrated scientific achievements of the century. He invented the lightning rod, which saved countless buildings from fire, as well as the Franklin stove, bifocal spectacles, and the glass armonica. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London in 1756 and received the Society's prestigious Copley Medal. He never patented any of his inventions, believing that scientific knowledge should be shared freely for the common good.

Franklin's civic contributions to Philadelphia were equally transformative. He helped establish the city's first lending library (the Library Company of Philadelphia, 1731), its first volunteer fire company, its first hospital (Pennsylvania Hospital, 1751), and the academy that became the University of Pennsylvania. He organized the colonial postal system and served as Postmaster General, creating an efficient mail service that connected the colonies.

As a statesman and diplomat, Franklin played a pivotal role in the founding of the United States. He was the only Founding Father to sign all four of the nation's foundational documents: the Declaration of Independence (1776), the Treaty of Alliance with France (1778), the Treaty of Paris ending the Revolutionary War (1783), and the United States Constitution (1787). His diplomatic skill in Paris, where he served as American minister from 1778 to 1785, was essential to securing the French military and financial support that made American independence possible.

Franklin died in Philadelphia on 17 April 1790, at the age of eighty-four. Approximately 20,000 people attended his funeral. In his final years, he had become an outspoken opponent of slavery and served as president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery. His autobiography, left unfinished at his death, became the prototype of the self-made-man narrative that has shaped American culture ever since.

Key accomplishments

Timeline

The dated lines from the record above, in order, with Benjamin Franklin's age worked out from the birth year (1706).

  1. 1706Born 17 January 1706, Boston, Province of Massachusetts Bay
  2. 1732Published Poor Richard's Almanack (1732-1758), one of the most widely read works in colonial America (around age 26)
  3. 1790Died 17 April 1790, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States

Quotes

In this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death and taxes.

Letter to Jean-Baptiste Le Roy, 13 November 1789

We must, indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.

Attributed; reportedly said at the signing of the Declaration of Independence, 1776

Related figures

Thomas Jefferson

Fellow Founding Father; both served on the committee to draft the Declaration of Independence

Voltaire

Met in Paris in 1778; both were celebrated as living embodiments of the Enlightenment

George Washington

Contemporaries; Franklin's diplomacy secured the French support Washington needed to win the war

Adam Smith

Contemporaries; Franklin's economic thinking paralleled Smith's free-trade ideas

Where Benjamin Franklin sits in the atlas

Contemporaries

23 other figures in the atlas were alive at some point during Benjamin Franklin's lifetime (1706-1790). These are the longest overlaps.

Others connected with the same cities

Figures not already listed on this page, nearest in time first.

Philadelphia (5 figures in the atlas)

Paris (31 figures in the atlas)

London (36 figures in the atlas)

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