Related content

• 111th Infantry Regiment (United States)
• A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity, Pleasure and Pain
• Aaron V. Brown
• Abolitionism
• Abraham Baldwin
• Abraham Clark
• Adam Ferguson
• Adam Smith
• Aether theories
• Age of Enlightenment
• Agnes Irwin
• Albany Congress
• Albany Plan
• Albert Gallatin
• Albert S. Burleson
• Albert Vincent Casey
• Alessandro Volta
• Alexander Dallas Bache
• Alexander Hamilton
• Alexander Randall
• Alexander Wedderburn
• American Enlightenment
• American football
• American Heritage (magazine)
• American National Biography
• American Philosophical Society
• American Revolution
• American Writers A Journey Through History
• Amory Houghton
• Amos Kendall
• Amy Gutmann
• Andrew A. Harwood
• Andrew Gregg Curtin
• Andrew Hamilton (lawyer)
• Andrew Kippis
• Andrew Oliver
• Ann Smith Franklin
• Anne Robert Jacques Turgot, Baron de Laune
• Anonymity
• Anonymously
• Anthony M. Frank
• Antoine Lavoisier
• Aphorism
• Apprenticeship
• Archives
• Arthur A. Hartman
• Arthur Cook (Pennsylvania)
• Arthur James (politician)
• Arthur K. Watson
• Arthur Lee (diplomat)
• Arthur Middleton
• Arthur Summerfield
• Articles of Confederation
• Atheism in the Age of Enlightenment
• Atlantic Ocean
• Authoritarianism
• Authority control
• Balloon (aircraft)
• Banknote
• Barbados
• Baron d'Holbach
• Battles of Lexington and Concord
• Bellows
• Ben Franklin effect
• Ben Franklin Stores
• Benjamin F. Bailar
• Benjamin Franklin
• Benjamin Franklin (clergyman)
• Benjamin Franklin (disambiguation)
• Benjamin Franklin Bache
• Benjamin Franklin Bache (journalist)
• Benjamin Franklin Bridge
• Benjamin Franklin House
• Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology
• Benjamin Franklin Medal (Franklin Institute)
• Benjamin Franklin Medal (Royal Society of Arts)
• Benjamin Franklin National Memorial
• Benjamin Franklin Parkway
• Benjamin Franklin Shibe
• Benjamin Franklin's phonetic alphabet
• Benjamin H. Brewster
• Benjamin Harrison V
• Benjamin Rush
• Benjamin Thompson
• Benjamin Wilson (painter)
• Bequest
• Bibliothèque nationale de France
• Bifocals
• Birmingham
• Blue plaque
• Board of Trade
• Book of Exodus
• Boston
• Boston Latin School
• Boston, MA
• British monarchy
• Bureau of Public Affairs
• Bust (sculpture)
• Button Gwinnett
• C-SPAN
• C. Douglas Dillon
• Caesar Rodney
• Cambridge
• Cambridge University Press
• Camden, New Jersey
• Capitalism
• Carl Clinton Van Doren
• Carl Lotus Becker
• Carter Braxton
• Catamaran
• Cave Johnson
• Centimetre gram second system of units
• Cesare Beccaria
• Champ de Mars
• Charge conservation
• Charles A. Wickliffe
• Charles Biddle
• Charles Blagden
• Charles Carroll of Carrollton
• Charles Cotesworth Pinckney

Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin (January 17, 1706 [O.S. January 6, 1705] – April 17, 1790) was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States. A noted polymath, Franklin was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, and diplomat. As a scientist, he was a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. He invented the lightning rod, bifocals, the Franklin stove, a carriage odometer, and the glass 'armonica'. He formed both the first public lending library in America and the first fire department in Pennsylvania.

Franklin earned the title of "The First American" for his early and indefatigable campaigning for colonial unity; as an author and spokesman in London for several colonies, then as the first United States Ambassador to France, he exemplified the emerging American nation. Franklin was foundational in defining the American ethos as a marriage of the practical and democratic values of thrift, hard work, education, community spirit, self-governing institutions, and opposition to authoritarianism both political and religious, with the scientific and tolerant values of the Enlightenment. In the words of historian Henry Steele Commager, "In a Franklin could be merged the virtues of Puritanism without its defects, the illumination of the Enlightenment without its heat." To Walter Isaacson, this makes Franklin "the most accomplished American of his age and the most influential in inventing the type of society America would become."