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U.S. Founding Fathers George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and John Adams all made contributions of a practical kind to the beginnings of American society. It was Benjamin Franklin, though, who embodied the inventiveness and sheer creative energy that would mark our American character.
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Franklin was a self-made man who rose to international importance in equal parts as inventor, scientist, revolutionary, and statesman. Benjamin Franklin was humbly raised as the 10th son of a Puritan soap maker in Colonial New England. The remarkable course of his life led him to become the era’s most celebrated scientist and diplomat. His life story reveals quite a bit about the opportunity and promise for advancement our young
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He founded America’s first lending library, a university, the first postal service, and a respected scholarly society. He became a devoted citizen of his adopted hometown of Philadelphia, which when he arrived in 1723 was a far larger city than either New York or Boston. Franklin considered his scientific experiments and inventions, including bifocal lenses and a smoke-free wood-burning stove, as a type of public service. He never patented1 or took money for any of his inventions.
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“An inventor is someone who sees the world for what it can be, not what it is now,” says Saul Griffith, a young engineer and inventor. “Franklin’s life proves that invention really is about change, dissatisfaction with the way things currently are, and a drive to create a better way of doing things.”
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It was in this spirit that Franklin and his younger colleagues, such as Jefferson, Adams, and John Hancock, set about inventing a new nation. Franklin first thought that a form of self-governing union with the British Empire would be best, but soon he came to recognize that a new nation of free citizens had been born in the American Colonies. Its destiny could only be fulfilled through
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Isaacson believes Franklin would have made extensive use of the Internet to spread information. “He was a great inventor; he was very technologically advanced. He believed in figuring out business plans or how you could make some new technology work. So I suspect he would be sort of publishing his own website; he would be enjoying the new technology. This is why we relate to him,” Isaacson said in an interview with U.S. public television during a celebration of Franklin’s 300th birthday in