Benjamin Franklin is one of the most beloved “Founding Fathers,” or the people responsible for establishing the United States when the colonies declared independence from Great Britain.
He entered the world on January of 1706 in Boston, Massachusetts. Due to his family’s financial situation, he only attended school until he was ten years old. In contrast, he picked up reading on his own and quickly as a young child. At the age of 12, he began training under one of his older brothers in the printing trade. His sibling was a prolific writer and would produce literature of all varieties. Franklin spent five years learning the trade from his sibling. That’s when he turned into a “voracious reader.” Actually, he read to himself until he learned to write. Franklin would relax in a chair and read works in the style he aspired to achieve. In particular, he enjoyed reading the Spectator, a political and cultural journal published in London since 1843 and one of the oldest magazines in the English-speaking world. Ben Franklin learned to write by reading the Spectator; he would read the same articles multiple times to have a good feel for the writing style, clearly a young man with exceptional intelligence.
Even though he was still a teenager, his newspaper writings were being praised for his wit and intelligence. He left Boston after issues arose at his brother’s newspaper and settled in Philadelphia, then part of the Pennsylvania Colony. There, he easily landed a job in the printing industry. There were many other young, educated, and wealthy men in Philadelphia that he befriended.
A year later, in 1724, he travelled to London with the hopes of meeting people who may assist him in launching his own printing firm after being encouraged to do so. At the time this was written, Britain still claimed the Americas as colonies. Thus, the majority of colonial enterprises had their genesis in London.
Franklin spent two prosperous years in London. Actually, he frequently visited the neighborhood, pubs and bars to meet and converse with other young men. Once he got back to Philadelphia in 1726, he began a printing business with a buddy in 1728. He acquired the store and was its sole proprietor by 1730. In addition, he wed a lady named Deborah Reed. Together, Franklin and Deborah would raise two children: a daughter they had conceived before their marriage and a son he had fathered with another woman. In general, ladies seemed to prefer Ben Franklin.
Franklin’s printing business was quite successful. In the business world, he stood out as a genius. As he gained experience in the printing industry, he was able to secure contracts to print local newspapers and even currency for several of the surrounding colonies, including Pennsylvania.
Poor Richard’s Almanac was another project he initiated. In Poor Richard’s Almanac, Franklin posed as a penniless man named Richard to sell his almanac. Following the success of Poor Richard’s Almanac, Franklin’s reputation as a writer spread well beyond Philadelphia and throughout the colonies. Franklin also launched what would become one of the city’s most prominent newspapers. Franklin frequently inserted into Poor Richard’s Almanac aphorisms that would go on to become staples of American vernacular. Of them, “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise” is the most well-known. This popular adage captures a core tenet of the American ideal: the belief that anyone, with enough time and effort, can achieve their goals and realize their dreams. To some extent, Ben Franklin exemplifies the American ideal because he rose from humble beginnings to achieve great wealth and fame through his entrepreneurial endeavours. And it all started, in a way, with Poor Richard’s Almanac and some of the small sayings he would write, the common folk sayings.
By the time he turned 42 in 1745, Franklin had amassed enough wealth to support himself comfortably without ever having to work again. He left the company voluntarily. He stopped working there full-time but continued to receive money by investing in a printing business so that he could pursue other interests.
Indeed, Franklin did that very thing. After retiring, one of Franklin’s first moves was to focus more on his passion in science and creation. Several of Franklin’s inventions have made him renowned. The “bifocal” was a creation of his. Many additional useful inventions were also conceived by Franklin. A lightning rod, which he helped invent, is installed on a building’s roof so that, in the event of a lightning storm, the bolts of electricity will strike the metal rod and then sink into the earth, rather than striking the structure below. Something like that was created by Benjamin Franklin. To this end, he developed the first glass harmonica.
The “Franklin stove” is a product he created. When you go inside historic homes in the East Coast of the United States, you can still locate Franklin stoves. He came up with the idea for the odometer, which measures how far something has travelled. So, Franklin was a guy of varied interests, or a “Renaissance man,” as the term is used today.
Also well-known for his scientific contributions, particularly in the field of electricity, Franklin is recognized well beyond the borders of the American colonies. Significant electric concepts, like as charges and discharges, were among those he uncovered. The ideas of an insulator and a conductor, as well as the foundation for what would become known as the “law of conservation of charge in electricity,” were initially discovered by him.
These findings, which occurred between around 1745 and 1760, earned him widespread renown in Europe’s academic community. In fact, he became a little celebrity in England and then France. To put it simply, he was well-known. The public was eager to meet him due to his high profile. Although by 1750 he had already established himself as an influential member of society by virtue of his many contributions to society at large as an innovator, scientist, businessman, and publisher.
Franklin had ambitions to enter public service, and he considered serving his community to be his highest calling. He got interested in politics not just in his hometown of Philadelphia, but also on a national and even a global scale. He spent over 18 years in England after being elected to a number of offices in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, before leaving for good.
In 1757 he travelled to London to join the British government. Over the course of his tenure in London, he forged relationships with a number of prominent academics, politicians, and thinkers. “Franklin,” even though he had never completed high school. He was sometimes addressed as “Dr.,” due to his honorary degrees from both Oxford University and St. Andrews University in Scotland.
Franklin had a deep affection for the United Kingdom. Perhaps even more than his own American colonies, he found much to admire there. He considered himself a gentleman, therefore he spent his time reading, writing, conversing, and getting active in politics. Franklin was not a radical revolutionary by any stretch of the imagination, yet few Americans realize this because of how their history is taught. In truth, he was a staunch supporter of the British monarchy and an advocate for keeping the colonies tied to the mother country.
As time went on, however, he came to terms with the fact that things were not going to go well between England and the colonies and that he would have to pick a side. It was at this point that he, in a sense, came into his own as an American, realizing that Great Britain was not going to treat the colonies fairly. And so, in 1775, he went back to the colonies. There was a growing distrust of Franklin among the colonists. They suspected that he was a royalist at heart. Several of them even suspected he was a spy.
On the other hand, after Franklin’s return in 1775, he was quickly elected to the second Continental Congress. As a result of this summit, the colonies resolved to break away from Britain and form their own independent nation. In 1776, the following year, Franklin collaborated with Thomas Jefferson and John Adams to draft our Declaration of Independence, in which the colonies officially announced their separation from Britain.
Franklin was sent to Paris because of his extensive international expertise; he is widely regarded as the country’s most effective diplomat. He travelled to France’s capital and successfully convinced the French government to back the colonies’ war against Britain. Throughout much of their histories, France and Great Britain have often been rivals. In contrast, the French had a lot of respect for Franklin. Many in French society at the time found him to be a fascinating and hilarious figure.
Franklin understood that the French were interested in seeing a man of modest origins — a poor guy from what were then the uncivilized colonies across the ocean, rising to the top of society as a successful, smart, and intellectual leader. He was so smart and accomplished that when he went to parties, he didn’t dress as a typical French or English gentleman would. Instead, he dressed more like a common man.
Franklin would have been content to stay in Paris when the Revolutionary War ended, but he knew he was getting too sick to continue living there. To his surprise, he did not get a warm welcome back in the United States upon his return. Others assumed he was more European than American. Having spent so much time in Europe, they thought he wasn’t truly American. Despite this, he was the oldest member of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, which he attended.
Franklin had been working on his autobiography, or the tale of his own life, for the most of his life. Even after his untimely demise in 1790, few Americans accorded him the respect he deserved. Despite his many contributions to his country, his death was met with relatively little mourning. At least some people’s views of Franklin shifted after his autobiography was published after his death in 1794.
And during the early nineteenth century in especially, Franklin became a national hero, someone who was considered as the best example of the American spirit, a man who was poor who became rich and then went on to serve his country. The idea of Franklin as a self-made man became commonplace in American literature of the nineteenth century. And he ended up becoming the most popular of our forefathers.
Even now, Benjamin Franklin is held in high esteem for being a man who rose from humble beginnings and achieved great success on his own terms—a man who, in short, personified the American dream. What a fascinating life Benjamin Franklin led.