Benjamin Franklin: Founding Father

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“Franklin was born in Boston on January 17, 1706 (January 6, 1705, in the old style calendar) of very humble origins, origins that always struck Franklin himself as poor.”(Wood,17) He proved throughout his life that he was quite the renaissance man, showing expertise in many professions and fields from Author to Inventor. Franklin proved time and time again that he was intellectually capable of doing pretty much anything. Franklin's status of being a founding father has proven how much of a staple he was in finding the United States of America. Even though he was never President of the United States, In 1753 Franklin became a royal officeholder, deputy postmaster general, in charge of mail in all the northern colonies (Encyclopedia Britannica). Something I found interesting in my research was that “in 1774, Benjamin Franklin was dismissed as joint postmaster general for the Crown because he was judged too sympathetic to the colonies.”(USPS). It’s crazy to think that even Benjamin Franklin, Founding Father, could be …show more content…

He made discoveries in many different fields of science from ocean currents to Meteorology, Franklin always had his feet dipped in science. A question that popped into his mind one day was why the voyage from America to England was so much shorter than the voyage from England to America. “Franklin learned about the Gulf Stream from a Nantucket Captain long engaged in the whaling business.” according to the author of Benjamin Franklin, Edwin Gaustad. English Sea Captains would sail in the current and lose as much as one hundred miles a day. As the postmaster general, Franklin would outline on maps where the current was so that seamen would stop sailing in the current. This discovery changed how we travel along the Atlantic to this day. According to a myth, Franklin was trying to observe a lunar eclipse but realized that the storm was not following the prevailing winds in the North East. The concept that storms always follow prevailing winds was proven wrong and yet and Franklin was yet noted with another