No Pain, No Gain: A Day in the Life of Benjamin Franklin
“No gains without pains.”
— Benjamin Franklin
U.S. History class probably taught you some of the well-er known facts about Benjamin Franklin; as a Founding Father of the United States, he helped draft the Declaration of Independence (and was one of its signers), he took a kite and a key out into a lightning storm and collected “ambient electrical charge in a Leyden jar” to demonstrate the connection between lightning and electricity (he also coined the terms battery, conductor, and electrician), and he wrote Poor Richard’s Almanack under the pseudonym Richard Saunders (History). What might you not know about Ben Franklin? Well, let’s go back to the very beginning.
Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston on January 17, 1706 to a poor English chandler (candle and soap maker, of course). He was the fifteenth of seventeen children. He left school at ten and worked for his brother’s print shop for a time. At 17 he ran away to Philadelphia, then London, then Philadelphia again (PBS). In Philadelphia he became a rich business man (not without some struggles along the way). Not only was he a writer, politician, freemason, scientist (and so on), he was also an inventor of such things as the lightning rod, bifocals, and the Franklin stove. He founded Philadelphia’s first fire department and the University of Pennsylvania. While it…
