Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin

When one takes a look at the world in which he currently lives, he sees it as being normal since it is so slow in changing. When a historian looks at present, he sees the effects of many events and many wise people. Benjamin Franklin is one of these people. His participation in so many different fields changed the world immensely. He was a noted politician as well as respected scholar. He was an important inventor and scientist. Particularly interesting is the impact on the scientific world.

Historical overview

Benjamin Franklin was born on January 17, 1706 in Boston, Massachusetts. He was the fifteenth child in a family of seventeen kids. His parents, Josiah and Abiah Franklin, were hard working devout Puritan/Calvinist people. Josiah Franklin made candles for a living. Since the Franklin's were so poor, little Benjamin couldn't afford to go to school for longer than two years. In those two years, however, Franklin learned to read which opened the door to further education for him. Since he was only a fair writer and had very poor mathematical skills, he worked to tutor himself at home.

As a result of many disagreements with his brother James, Franklin left Boston to go to Philadelphia in 1723, and then got a job in a printing press. The following year he traveled to London, where he remained for two years. In October 1726, returned to Philadelphia and engaged in the printing industry. He published the weekly "Pennsylvania Gazette" (1730-1748), which had been founded in 1728, but his most important literary achievement was the annual publication of "Poor Richard's Almanac" (1733-58), the second most popular publication, after the Bible, at the time of the colonies, whose fame eventually spread to Europe.

Benjamin Franklin served as secretary (1736-51) and member of the Pennsylvania General Assembly (1751-1764), also as postmaster of Philadelphia (1737-53) and general representative of the colonies (1753-74). He was also delegate from Pennsylvania at the Albany Congress (1754), organized to unite the colonies during the wars of France and India. Congress adopted its "Plan of Union", but the General Assembly of the Colony refused because usurping their rights.

He lived in England from 1757 to 1762 and from 1764 to 1775, originally as a representative of Pennsylvania and then Georgia, New Jersey and Massachusetts. During his second stay in England, which coincided with the growth of colonial resistance, Franklin underwent a political metamorphosis. Until then had been an English passive in appearance, essentially concerned with Pennsylvania provincial politics, unbelieving people's movements and the idea of bringing the principles to the extreme. It was not until the tax issue in parliament weakened the old alliances; Franklin decided to direct the party's struggle against the party Quaker property Presbyterians of England and its allies on the border. The purpose of your stay in London was the dismissal of the Penn family administration by royal authority and the change in the province by a single owner to the colony of royalty.

In London, during the crisis of the Stamp ...