Benjamin Franklin Research Paper

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Benjamin Franklin is known as one of the founding fathers of the United States of America as well as one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence that declared the Thirteen Colonies apart from Great Britain in 1776. As if that is not enough for one man, Franklin is also very famous for his experiments into electricity. You have probably heard of the experiment when Franklin attached a key to a kite and had his son William fly it out of a window during a thunder storm. If you have insurance you can thank Franklin as well. In 1752 Franklin started the Philadelphia Contributionship, the first mutual fire and fire damage insurance company. It is for these reasons and countless others that Ben is considered one of the most important men …show more content…

Franklin published a pamphlet to sell the "Pennsylvania Fire Place," stove he had created. The pamphlet showed all its benefits and the invention sold very well. The Franklin stove had some design flaws that were fixed by another inventor. An improved design of the Franklin stove is still used today. Franklin started watching storms and studying weather patterns. It all started when Franklin had planned to watch an eclipse of the moon, but a storm blew into Philadelphia and blocked his view. Later, he discovered that people in Boston, hundreds of miles away were able to watch the eclipse before the storm arrived. Franklin correctly stated that the direction of the wind before the storm is not necessarily the direction of the storms direction of movement. This is the first known time in which the movement of a storm system as a separate occurrence was recognized. This made Franklin very interested in storms. In the spare time that he had Ben Franklin started the Union Fire Company. Lots of times fires were started by bad fireplaces but sometimes fires were started because of lightning, this made Ben interested in it. He theorised that it was a very powerful type of electricity. Franklin began experimenting with lightning as a more powerful source of energy then what could already be proven that existed. In the 1700’s small …show more content…

In 1757 Franklin became an agent in Britain, representing the colonies. He strongly voiced for the rights of the colonists. In November 1775, the Second Continental Congress created the Committee of Secret Correspondence for the purpose of furthering the American cause in England and Europe. This was the colonies first foreign intelligence operation. The committee conducted secret operations, devised ciphers and codes, employed secret agents, and paid for advertising activities. Benjamin Franklin was one of the five original members of this committee.

If you are using or do use bifocal glasses you can thank Ben Franklin as well. In 1784 Franklin invented the bifocals. At first people were skeptical of the glasses until they tried them and found that they actually worked. As word got around Franklin sold more than 500 in his first month after their invention. But the glasses were far from comfortable with hard metal frames and sometimes oddly shaped glass it would be almost 30 years before they were “upgraded” by another