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Benjamin Franklin was born on January 17, 1706 in Boston,
Massachusetts. He was the youngest child, and tenth boy of 17
children. Franklin was one of the leading founding fathers of
the United States of America. He was a member of the committee
that drafted the Declaration of Independence and was one of
its signatories. He also signed the Constitution of the United
States, and served as the new nation’s ablest diplomat.
Franklin’s formal schooling ended early but his education
never did. He believed that “the doors to wisdom are never
shut,” and read every book he could get his hands on. Franklin
taught himself simple algebra and geometry, navigation, logic,
history, science, English grammar and a working knowledge of
five other languages.
Franklin had a simple formula for success. He believed that
successful people worked just a little harder than other
people. Benjamin Franklin certainly did. He built a successful
printing and publishing business in Philadelphia; he conducted
scientific studies of electricity and made several important
discoveries; he was an accomplished diplomat and statesman; he
helped establish Pennsylvania’s first university and America’s
first city hospital. He also organized the country’s first
subscription library.
Franklin was also unequaled in America as an inventor until
Thomas Edison. He invented the Franklin stove, bifocal
eyeglasses and the lightning rod. Franklin wasn’t greedy about
his inventions, preferring to have them used freely for the
comfort and convenience of everyone. Thomas Jefferson called
Benjamin Franklin “the greatest man and ornament of the age
and country in which he lived.”
Franklin had a strong belief that good citizenship included an
obligation of public service. Franklin himself served the city
of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and the new United States of
America, in one way or the other, for most of his life. To
Benjamin Franklin there was no greater purpose in life than to
“live usefully.”
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