Benjamin
Franklin
(Boston,
1706 - Philadelphia, 1790) American politician, scientist, and inventor.
A scholar of electricity and everything that
caught his interest, inventor of the lightning rod and other useful devices, an
honest and efficient public figure, and a prominent architect of American
independence, Benjamin Franklin was perhaps the most beloved figure of his time
in his country and the only American from the British colonial era to achieve
fame and notoriety in Europe.
Only
through admiration is it possible to approach his figure, and at the same time,
it is difficult to think of Franklin without experiencing a sense of human
warmth. His appearance was so unassuming, his personality so pleasant, and his
sense of humor sprang so spontaneously that people found it easy to love and
respect him. Large gray eyes and a smile-prone mouth adorned the face of this
paragon of virtue, who was able to excel in every field he pursued.
"Will,
talent, genius, and grace were united in him, as if nature had been both
wasteful and happy in forming him," stated one of his biographers. Beyond
these gifts, Franklin always firmly believed that it was possible to modify the
negative aspects of character through discipline that was both gentle and constant.
In his youth, he always carried a list of admirable qualities, which later
became a small book with each page dedicated to a virtue. Franklin would devote
a week of attention to each one, rereading it as soon as he had the
opportunity, and starting over when he reached the end.
Biography
The
fifteenth of seventeen children, Benjamin Franklin only completed elementary
school, which he abandoned at the
age of ten. The vast encyclopedic erudition he would display in later life was
the result of an insatiable curiosity and a self-taught effort that he always
combined with his professional activities. At the age of twelve, he began
working as a printer in a company owned by John Franklin, one of his brothers.
In 1723,
after a dispute with his brother, he fled to Philadelphia, where, penniless, he
found work in a printing house. After two years of similar employment in
England, where he had been sent with worthless recommendations, he returned to
Philadelphia and worked independently as a printer and publisher. In 1727, he
was responsible for the issuance of paper money in the British colonies in
America. He later founded the newspaper The Pennsylvania Gazette, which he
published between 1728 and 1748, and in 1732, he undertook the edition of Poor
Richard's Almanac (1732-1757).
Benjamin
Franklin
With the
publication of the Almanac, a common miscellaneous yearbook of the time that
included saints' days, horoscopes, medical advice, and weather forecasts, a
period of prosperity began in his life. Franklin himself served as editor,
publisher, and director, although he attributed the authorship to a fictional
character who would eventually become extremely famous: the extravagant Richard
Saunders, from whom the title "Poor Richard's Almanac" comes.
This
Richard is an old provincial "Yankee" of variable humor, a rustic
philosopher with hints of misogynism, who, to the great despair of his wife,
Bridget, spends his time among dusty books and astrological calculations,
instead of earning money to support his family. He decides to publish the
almanac precisely to reconcile his hobbies with that need.
Along
with the usual sections, Franklin also had the good sense to include all sorts
of maxims, proverbs, sayings, and famous quotes, taken from a variety of
sources; sometimes, applying his genius and experience to human behavior, he
even invented them himself, so successfully that they eventually became
popular. After twenty-five years of uninterrupted publication, with print runs
reaching ten thousand copies (an impressive figure for the time), Benjamin
Franklin had amassed a considerable fortune that allowed him to abandon
printing.
The
Statesman
Benjamin
Franklin's period of intense political activity began in 1757, after completing
his long tenure as a printer. The most important aspect of this period was his
work as an inspirer and active factotum of independence. He can be credited
with the original idea of the United States as a single
nation, rather than a group of separate colonies, since two decades before the
American Revolutionary War, he conceived a system of state governments united
under a single federal authority.
Having
already become one of Philadelphia's most important public figures, he had been
elected to the Legislative Assembly; he successfully completed the treaty with
the rebel Indians, found a rational system for street cleaning, and promoted
numerous initiatives and improvements. His active and multifaceted nature led
him to participate in local affairs, for example, in the creation of institutions
such as the Philadelphia Fire Department, the Public Library and the University
of Pennsylvania, as well as the American Philosophical Society. As Postmaster
General of Philadelphia, the first of many important public offices he would
hold with brilliant efficiency, Franklin achieved a series of dazzling
successes in improving service, greatly expanding the frequency of mail
deliveries and improving mail routes.
When he
was sent to London in 1757 to defend the interests of the American colonies before
the mother country, Benjamin Franklin began an intense political effort that
would ultimately bear the desired fruits. On one famous occasion, he spent the
entire day in the House of Commons, skilfully answering questions posed to him
by members of that honorable institution regarding the colonies' resistance to
the much-hated English tax law, which was detrimental to the interests of the
American colonists. The result was that Parliament repealed the law (1766), and
the war was delayed for ten years, giving the independence fighters ample time
to prepare.
Faced
with the new fiscal and political pressures exerted by the mother country,
Benjamin Franklin left London; he returned to Philadelphia in 1775 and firmly
joined the independence movement. That same year, he was appointed
representative of Pennsylvania to the Second Continental Congress, where
representatives of the thirteen North American colonies decided to form an army
to fight against England. The following year, he drafted the historic Declaration
of Independence (1776) with Thomas Jefferson and John Adams.
Due to
his prestige, he was chosen in December of that year to undertake a tour of
Europe (1776-1785) in search of support for the independence cause. It was
essential to secure French aid, without which the war could drag on
indefinitely or even be lost. George Washington had dedicated himself to
organizing an American army, but the mother country possessed all the power,
weapons, and important allies. It was necessary to counter this power by
enlisting French aid. Franklin not only convinced the reluctant French monarch,
Louis XVI, to secretly send supplies to General Washington, but a year later
(1778) succeeded in persuading Washington to openly enter the war as an ally
after signing a treaty of friendship.
Benjamin Franklin (portrait by David
Martin, 1767)
After the
war was over and independence was effectively achieved, Benjamin Franklin
participated in the negotiations to conclude the peace treaty that would end
the conflict (1783). After his return to Philadelphia, he was appointed to the
convention charged with drafting the American Constitution (1787). Franklin
also managed to resolve a problem that threatened to seriously hamper the
formation of the new country: the small states wanted equal representation in
Congress with the larger states, and the larger states, in turn, wanted the
number of delegates chosen based on each state's population.
Franklin
resolved the difficulty by accepting the first proposal as the basis for the Senate
and the second for the House of Representatives. Then, when the Constitution
was ready, he personally saw to it that it was ratified by the individual
states, a task that required all his powers of persuasion and his abilities as
a masterful reasoned: none of his interlocutors resisted his arguments.
Returning to Philadelphia, already old and tired, and hoping for a well-earned
rest, he found himself immediately burdened with new public responsibilities,
once again carrying out in his perfect and admirable style the missions
entrusted to him.
The
Scientist
Benjamin
Franklin's interest in scientific matters began in the middle of the 20th
century and roughly coincided with this period of intense political activity.
During a stay in France in 1752, he conducted the famous kite experiment, which
allowed him to demonstrate that clouds are electrically charged and that,
therefore, lightning is essentially an electrical discharge.
To carry
out this experiment, which was not without risk, he used a kite equipped with a
metal wire attached to a silk thread, which, according to his assumption, would
be charged with the electricity captured by the wire. During the storm, he
placed his hand near a key hanging from the silk thread and observed that, as
in the Leyden jar experiments he had previously conducted; sparks flew,
demonstrating the presence of electricity.
The
Kite Experiment
(oil painting by B. West)
This
discovery led him to invent the lightning rod, whose effectiveness led to the
installation of 400 of these devices in Philadelphia by 1782. His work on
electricity led him to formulate concepts such as negative and positive
electricity (based on the observation of the behavior of amber rods) and the
electrical conductor, among others. He also expounded a theory about
electricity in which he considered it to be a subtle fluid that could present
an excess or a defect. He discovered the power of metal points by observing
that an electrically charged body discharges much more quickly if it ends in a
point. He also enunciated the principle of conservation of electrical charge.
Benjamin
Franklin also invented the so-called Franklin stove (1742), an iron stove with
greater efficiency and lower consumption, and bifocal lenses. His great
curiosity about natural phenomena led him to study, among other things, the
course of storms that form on the American continent. He was the first to
analyze the warm current that flows through the North Atlantic and is now known
as the Gulf Stream.
An expert
musician and instrumentalist, he also wrote about the problems of musical
composition, particularly those related to adapting music to lyrics so that the
latter could be intelligible. A detailed account of his discoveries would be
endless and exhausting, as his creative capacity and sense of anticipation were
absolutely extraordinary.
Benjamin
Franklin died in Philadelphia at the age of 84. He had remained active
practically his entire life; only two years earlier, he had decided to retire
from public life and complete his Autobiography (begun around 1771), which
would be published posthumously. One of the reasons for his longevity was his
profound knowledge of health-related topics. He took long walks whenever he
could, was an example of moderation at the table, and, contrary to many
prejudices accepted by his contemporaries, had habits that were unusual for the
average American, such as the custom, considered extravagant and pernicious, of
sleeping with the windows wide open.
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How
to cite this article: Tomás Fernández and Elena Tamaro. "Biography of
Benjamin Franklin" [Internet]. Barcelona, Spain: Editorial Biografías y Vidas, 2004. Available at
https://www.biografiasyvidas.com/biografia/f/franklin.htm [accessed August 30,
2025].
With affection, Ruben
