Ben Franklin Essay, Research Paper
“If you would not be forgotten, as soon as you are dead and rotten,
either write things worth reading, or do things worth the writing”. America
has never forgotten Benjamin Franklin because he did both. He lived these
words of wisdom by writing as much as he could and by doing even more.
He became famous for being a scientist, an inventor, a statesman, a printer, a
philosopher, a musician, and an economist. Benjamin Franklin is most
famous for his experiment and research in the field of electricity. He also
observed and made discoveries in storms and weather.
Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston on Jan. 17, 1706. His father,
Josiah, was a poor soap & candlemaker. His mother, Abiah, was Josiah’s
second wife. Benjamin was the youngest son and the
15th of 17 children.
At the age of 10 Benjamin began to help in his father’s shop, cutting
candlewicks and filling molds. Although he went to school only two years,
Ben was fond of books and spent much of his spare time reading. He also
became an expert swimmer. One of his first inventions was a set of paddles to
give him greater swimming speed.
Benjamin Franklin was an active inventor all his life. One of his most
famous inventions was the Franklin stove. In his time houses were poorly
heated by open fireplaces. Franklin s stove was put in the fireplace, but its
grate extended out into the room. This heater cast warmth in all directions. As
Franklin said, the stove prevented a person “being scorched before, and, as it
were, froze behind”.
The Governor of Pennsylvania wanted Ben Franklin to patent his
invention, but Ben Franklin refused. He wanted the stoves to be cheap and
inexpensive so even poor people could afford to purchase
and use his stoves. For more than a hundred years the Franklin stove brought
com
inventions.
Benjamin Franklin made many scientific discoveries in his time. Ben
Franklin was what some would call an out doors man that s why most of his
discoveries had to do with nature.
In 1743, Ben observed that northeast storms begin in the southwest. He
thought it was odd that storms travel in an opposite direction to their winds.
He predicted that a storm’s course could be plotted. Ben rode a horse through
a storm and chased a whirlwind three-quarters of a mile in order to learn more
about storms. So, in a way, Ben was a weatherman. He even printed weather
forecasts in his almanac. Today s meteorologists don’t chase storms on
horseback, but they do continue to plot the course of storms.
Ben Franklin spent a lot of his time sailing to Europe across the
Atlantic Ocean, he became very interested in ocean currents. Ben was one of
the first people to chart the Gulf Stream. He measured its temperature on each
of his eight voyages and was able to chart the Stream in detail.
Whenever people hear the name Benjamin Franklin the first thing that
usually comes to mind is his famous lightning experiment with the kite and
the key. Ben suspected that lightning was an electrical current in nature, and
he wanted to see if he was right. One way to test his idea would be to see if
the lightning would pass through metal. He decided to use a metal key and a
child s kite to get the key up near the lightning. His experiment proved that
lightning is really a stream of electrified air, known today as plasma.
In conclusion Benjamin Franklin was a man who changed the world of
science and the way people think about it. He accomplished many feats and
invented things to help the average person, this makes Mr. Benjamin Franklin
one most important scientists in history.