Benjamin Franklin: An American Life

by Walter Isaacson

But in 1747, he proposed something that was, though he may not have realized it, far more radical: a military force that would be independent of Pennsylvania’s colonial government.

realized that the colonists might have to fend for themselves instead of relying on their British governors,

fend

tinkerer.

Franklin’s scientific inquiries were driven, primarily, by pure curiosity and the thrill of discovery.

antic

Unlike in some of his other pursuits, he was not driven by pecuniary motives; he declined to patent his famous inventions, and he took pleasure in freely sharing his findings.

In general, he would begin a scientific inquiry driven by pure intellectual curiosity and then seek a practical application for it.

But what is today commonly known as the Franklin Stove is a far simpler contraption than what he originally envisioned.3

Franklin also combined science and mechanical practicality by devising the first urinary catheter used in America, which was a modification of a European invention. His brother John in Boston was gravely ill and wrote Franklin of his desire for a flexible tube to help him urinate.

surmised,

The Abbé Nollet, court scientist to France’s King Louis XV, had linked 180 soldiers and then 700 monks and made them jump in unison for the court’s amusement by sending through them a jolt of static electricity.

“chagrined

hitherto

vain

The frivolity went well. Though turkeys proved harder to kill than chickens, Franklin and friends finally succeeded by linking together a big battery. “The birds killed in this manner eat uncommonly tender,”

In Venice, some three thousand people were killed when tons of gunpowder stored in a church was hit.

Franklin first sketched out his theories about lightning in April 1749, just before his end-of-season turkey fry.

insulating

sentry

dragooned

annals

Benjamin West’s famous 1805 painting, Franklin Drawing Electricity from the Sky, mistakenly shows him as a wrinkled sage rather than a lively 46-year-old, and an equally famous nineteenth-century Currier and Ives print shows William as a little boy rather than a man of about 21.

sleuthing.

embellishing

vicious

denigrate

scruple.”

“philosophical amusements,” the term used in the eighteenth century for scientific experiments.

lad

conniving,

fostering

smacking

consciousness,

egalitarian

His proposals for what became the University of Pennsylvania (in contrast to Jefferson’s for the University of Virginia) were aimed not at filtering a new elite but at encouraging and enriching all “aspiring” young men.

countered

Slaves made up about 6 percent of Philadelphia’s population at the time,

But he mainly focused on the ill effects to the owners rather than the immorality done to the slaves.

prejudiced

“Some may think these trifling matters not worth minding,” Franklin said, but they should remember that “human felicity is produced . . . by little advantages that occur every day.”10

pacifist

exempt

Two big issues faced Pennsylvania at the time: forging good relations with the Indians and protecting the colony from the French.

fervent

truculently

“Walking Purchase.” (An old deed had given the Penns a tract of Indian land that was defined as what a man could walk in a day and a half, and Thomas Penn had hired three fleet runners to sprint for thirty-six hours, thus claiming far more land than intended.)

rum

furthered

disparate

“Join, or Die.”