Pioneers of Power – Benjamin Franklin

To say that Benjamin Franklin had an interesting life would be a massive understatement. Born in 1706 in Boston, Massachusetts he was one of seventeen children born to Josiah Franklin, and one of ten mothered by Josiah’s second wife Abiah Folger.

At a young age, Benjamin’s father wanted him to attend school with the clergy, but due to a lack of funds was only able to pay for two years of education.

Fortunately, Benjamin loved to read and through a voracious appetite for knowledge educated himself via books. At the age of ten, his father wanted him to join the church and he worked as a printer’s apprentice to his brother James who taught him the trade.

When he was 15, Benjamin’s brother founded the American colonies first independent newspaper The New England Courant. Benjamin would regularly write letters to the paper under the pseudonym of ‘Mrs. Silence Dogood’ that were often controversial in nature. He kept up the ruse for a while causing much gossip and conjecture as to who Mrs Dogood was.

Benjamin from an early age was a strong advocate for free speech and when his brother was imprisoned for publishing material that was insulting to the governor, he took over the newspaper. Posing as Mrs Dogood he published further pieces calling for freedom of speech and railed against the British authorities. Eventually, at the age of 17, Benjamin grew tired of his apprenticeship and absconded without his brother’s permission and ran away to Philadelphia.

It was while in Philadelphia that he met Deborah Read who he took as his common-law wife. Together they had three children. William, who was considered illegitimate due to being born outside of marriage, but who was acknowledged and raised by Benjamin and Deborah. He went on to become the last colonial governor general of New Jersey, Francis who sadly died of smallpox at just 5 years old and Sarah who married Richard Bache who became head of the American Post Office and had 7 children of her own.

To list all of Franklin’s exploits would see this article run into several pages so needless to say his life was a very eventful one. When not writing for newspapers or travelling to Europe he was fascinated by electricity which at that time remained something of a mystery to science.

In the 1750s scientists were becoming increasingly interested in electrical phenomena, but they had no theory that could explain what it was. Franklin rocked the scientific community by theorising that a bolt of lightning was, in fact, a huge electrical spark.

To prove his theory Benjamin would embark on the experiment that would go down in legend. We still don’t know if he actually carried out his famous flying a kite in a thunderstorm experiment himself.

We do know that French scientist Thomas-Francois Dalibard conducted Franklin’s experiment using a 40-foot-tall iron rod instead of a kite. Lightning struck the rod as predicted and proved Franklin’s theory was correct.

Franklin’s experiments led to his inventing of the lightning rod which he tested on his own house with success. He surmised that his invention would help protect buildings from lightning by attaching "upright Rods of Iron, made sharp as a Needle and gilt to prevent Rusting, and from the Foot of those Rods a Wire down the outside of the Building into the Ground; Would not these pointed Rods probably draw the Electrical Fire silently out of a Cloud before it came nigh enough to strike, and thereby secure us from that most sudden and terrible Mischief!"

Franklin’s lightning rod was the first electrical device to have a function other than entertainment or experimentation. His experiments led to a revolution in experimenting and scientific understanding which paved the way for new inventions that would harness electricity for practical uses.

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