Franklin Read online

  Even after their daughter, Sarah, was born in 1743, Deborah still resented William. As he grew older, William noticed this fact. Benjamin tried to soothe these feelings, but he was not always successful. The household had grown, too, to include servants to help with the cooking, housework, and caring for Deborah’s mother, who lived with them. There were apprentices to take on other chores and run errands. Deborah devoted most of her time to Sarah. Benjamin was preoccupied with his work. He gave William early drafts of his Almanack to proofread, and William also proved useful as a bookkeeper and supervised his father’s apprentices.

  Benjamin began to consider his future. By 1745, he was successful, with an income of more than £2,000. (An ordinary working man made £15 a year.) He owned and rented out several houses in Philadelphia. But Franklin saw no point in “the pursuit of wealth to no purpose” and he told a story about visiting a wealthy Philadelphia friend, who gave him a tour of his expensive new house. The rooms were huge, and each time Franklin asked why he had given himself so much space, the man replied, “Because I can afford it.” Finally, Franklin said, “Why don’t you buy a hat six times too big for your head? You can afford that too.”

  That kind of life was not for him. At the age of forty-two, he retired from printing. He hired a new printer, Scotsman David Hall, and offered him a chance to run the business if Hall would agree to pay Franklin half the profits from the Pennsylvania Gazette and Poor Richard’s Almanack and other work done by the print shop for the next twenty years. At the end of that time, Hall would become sole owner of the business. Hall leaped at the chance.

  People in Philadelphia speculated about Franklin’s next undertaking. Some friends thought he should keep his profitable business that could make him one of the wealthiest men in America. They were amazed the retired Franklin was working harder than ever. But he had a new passion - solving the mysteries of electricity.

  Two years earlier, while visiting relatives in Boston, Franklin attended a lecture by Archibald Spencer, a Scottish scientist who performed electrical experiments. Later that year, Spencer sold most of his apparatus to Franklin. Franklin bought more equipment through Peter Collinson, a Quaker friend in London who was a member of the prestigious Royal Society. Soon he was writing to Collinson, “I never was before engaged in any study that so totally engrossed my attention and my time as this has lately done.”

  Scientists knew little about electricity. They produced it by rubbing glass tubes with silk or wool with resin. In 1746, educators at the University of Leyden in the Netherlands discovered how to store electricity in a special bottle – the Leyden jar - lined with strips of tin. Most scientists thought there were two kinds of electricity: vitreous (from silk) and resinous (from resin). Franklin, experimenting in his laboratory, concluded electricity was a single “fluid” that sometimes attracted and sometimes repelled. Why?

  To answer that question, Franklin gathered three volunteers in his laboratory and had two - A and B - stand on wax squares, which insulated them from the ground. He had A rub a glass tube, thereby transferring some electricity in his body to the tube. He then held the tube out to B, and immediately, an electric spark jumped from the tube to B’s hand. A now had less electricity than normal, and B had more than usual. Franklin told B to hold out his hand to volunteer C, who was standing on the ground. Immediately, a spark leaped from B to C. Franklin repeated the experiment, instructing B to ignore C and to hold out his hand to A. A stronger spark jumped from B back to A.

  The explanation? B’s body, once he received the charge from A, contained more electricity than normal. He was charged positively, Franklin said. A, with less electricity, was charged negatively. To simplify the explanation, Franklin called the positive charge plus and the negative charge minus. This breakthrough in the study of electricity enabled scientists to understand for the first time how current travels from one body to another.

  Franklin noticed that a sharp object, such as a knitting needle, drew electricity from a positively charged body more rapidly and from a greater distance than a blunt object.

  On November 7, 1749, Franklin moved closer to his great discovery. In a journal of his experiments, he wrote, “Electrical fluid agrees with lightning in these particulars. 1. Giving light. 2. Colour of the light. 3. Crooked direction. 4. Swift motion. 5. Being conducted by metals. 6. Crack or noise in exploding. 7. Subsisting in water or ice. 8. Rending bodies it passes through. 9. Destroying animals. 10. Melting metals. 11. Firing inflammable substances. 12. Sulphureous smell. The electric fluid is attracted by points. We do not know whether this property is in lightning. But since they agree in all particulars wherein we can already compare them, is it not probable they agree likewise in this? Let the experiment be made.”

  Nine months later, he summarized his electrical discoveries in a letter to Collinson. He suggested erecting “on top of some high tower or steeple . . . a kind of sentry box,” containing a man and an insulated stand. From the middle of the stand, an iron rod would rise and, bending at right angles, would pass out the door and rise again, twenty or thirty feet to a sharp point. If clouds contained electricity, as Franklin suspected, the pointed rod would draw the “fluid.”

  Franklin’s letter was published in England as a book entitled, Experiments and Observations on Electricity, Made at Philadelphia in America. It was translated into French, and soon two French electricians conducted Franklin’s experiment, drawing electricity from clouds. British electricians repeated this a few weeks later.

  Franklin, meanwhile, tried another, more famous approach. Since no high ground or church steeple existed in or near Philadelphia, Franklin made a kite out of a silk kerchief, attached a pointed wire to the tip, and, accompanied by his son William, went to the commons on the edge of Philadelphia. William got the kite aloft in a thunderstorm, racing back and forth across a cow pasture while his father observed from the safety of a shepherd’s shed. For insulation, Franklin tied the kite string to a silk ribbon in his hand. He attached a key to the string just above the ribbon.

  At first, the kite dove and looped, and nothing happened. But when rain wet the string, its fibers stood erect, proof that they were positively charged. Franklin touched his knuckle to the key and received a mild shock. He held the tip of a Leyden jar to the key and drew a large supply of electrical “fluid.” He had been right. Clouds were full of electricity, and lightning and electricity were identical.

  A few months later, in Poor Richard’s Almanack, Franklin published the application of his idea. “It has pleased God in his goodness to mankind at length to discover to them the means of securing their habitations and other buildings from mischief by thunder and lightning.” He described how people could erect lightning rods on their roofs and run them down the side of the building to the ground. The same could be done for ships by running a wire from a rod on the mast down a sail to the water. The rod would thus ground the lightning charge, instead of letting it hit the house or ship. Franklin made no attempt to patent his invention. He gave it to the world free, as he did with other inventions, including the Pennsylvania fireplace. Often called the Franklin stove, his was the first fireplace that kept warm air in the room instead of letting it escape up the chimney. Franklin invented the first electrical battery and redesigned Philadelphia’s street lights, substituting four flat panes of glass for a globe. Franklin refused to profit from his inventions, because, he said, he had profited from the inventions of others.

  Franklin’s discoveries, particularly his work with lightning and the lightning rod, made him famous. The king of France sent his personal congratulations. The British Royal Society elected him a member by unanimous vote and bestowed upon him the Copley Medal, its highest award. Harvard and Yale gave him honorary degrees. Immanuel Kant, the greatest philosopher of the time, compared him to Prometheus, the Greek god who brought fire from heaven and gave it to humankind. In 1750, most believed there was something divine about lightning, associating it with an angry God; the person who tamed it
acquired an almost superhuman image.

  Franklin didn’t act like a superman. Instead, he enjoyed entertaining friends with electrical tricks. He would electrify a many-legged piece of wire and make it walk like a spider. He darkened the room and electrified the gold border of a book. He electrified the gold crown on a painting of England’s King George II, shocking anyone who touched it. He put a glass of brandy on one side of the Schuylkill River and sent an electric current across the river to set it ablaze. Once, to show electricity’s power, he knocked down three strong men with one charge.

  During one exhibition, as he was showing visitors how he could kill a turkey via electrocution, Franklin accidentally touched the positive and negative poles. There was a loud crack, and Franklin’s body convulsed. He blacked out for several seconds. The hand that received the electric charge was white, and he had a bruise on his breastbone. He later joked, “I was going to kill a turkey, but it seems that I almost killed a goose.”

  Stories about Franklin’s experiments attracted curiosity seekers. They lurked outside his house, trying to watch the electrician at work. One day, Franklin electrified the rail fence on which they leaned. The gawkers vanished, certain the devil had gotten inside them.

  His son William was his eager laboratory assistant. William studied Franklin’s theories and daily journals and contributed his own impressions, formed by participating in his father’s experiments. He read up on similar trials taking place in Europe. As with the kite experiment, William thrilled at being the risk-taker. He scaled roofs to install Franklin’s lightning rods and collect in glass bottles electricity from passing thunderstorms. Once on a trip through Maryland, the father and son saw the formation of a small tornado in the distance. Franklin began to track it, hoping to gain some understanding of its cause, but was ready to abandon the study when the swirling debris made it too dangerous to pursue. William, though, chased the whirlwind, prodding his horse until he was nearly swept up in it himself. Then he turned back and reported what he saw to Franklin.

  One summer, while Franklin was away in Boston, a violent thunderstorm wreaked havoc on their Philadelphia neighborhood. The worst of the damage was to a three-story home, which had been struck directly by a massive bolt of lightning. In the light of the next morning, William investigated. He discovered bricks shattered “as if done by a blow of a hammer . . . from underneath.” Holes were bored into the woodwork, the splinters driven upward. Door hinges and glass panels had melted. Window frames were shattered from the bottom up. On the roof, the shingles were singed. William hurriedly scribbled down notes and sketched his findings. He wrote to his father with excitement. His theory: The lightning had passed upward. Franklin sent a scientist named Ebenezer Kinnersley to study William’s notes. Ultimately, Kinnersley, not William, took credit for the discovery.

  Franklin spent four years studying electricity, transforming it from a curiosity into a branch of science. If he had been able to continue, he might have made even more remarkable discoveries.

  But political difficulties in Pennsylvania arose, and Franklin believed solving political and moral problems was more important than science; the welfare of Pennsylvania - a colony of more than 300,000 - was a mightier responsibility. Franklin thought citizens in a free society shared responsibility for its safety and health. He was grateful to Pennsylvania for giving him a chance to overcome poverty and attain wealth and fame, and he wanted to give others the same opportunity. So when citizens elected him to the Assembly as a representative from Philadelphia, he abandoned his laboratory and worked on the challenges facing Pennsylvania.

  The Penns were a problem. They owned millions of acres, but refused to pay taxes on them. Each governor sent from England had instructions to veto any bill passed by the Assembly taxing the proprietors’ estates.

  The Penns’ refusal to share the expenses of dealing with Native Americans angered legislators. Each year, Pennsylvania and other colonies gave tribes gifts to buy their loyalty and maintain peace. The French, in possession of Canada, began vying for the natives’ support with more expensive presents. This was unfortunate for the colonies because the French, united in a single colony with the wealth of the French king supporting them, outbid individual colonies. One of Franklin’s first duties as assemblyman was to negotiate new treaties with Pennsylvania’s tribes. When he and fellow commissioners learned the tribes considered their offerings inadequate, they gave their own money to buy more goods “at the Philadelphia price” on the frontier.

  Franklin worried that France’s plans to move down the Ohio River and claim the colonies between the Appalachian Mountains and the Atlantic Ocean threatened the colonies. It was time for the colonies to unite. He noted the strength of the Iroquois, a confederation of six tribes. Why didn’t the English follow their example? “It would be a strange thing if six nations of ignorant savages should be capable of forming a scheme for such an union, and be able to execute it in such a manner as that it has subsisted ages and appears indissoluble; and yet that a like union should be impracticable for ten or a dozen English colonies, to whom it is more necessary and must be more advantageous. . . .”

  Franklin began thinking of the thirteen colonies as a nation that must be formed.

  Before he began to study electricity, Franklin had tried to unite Americans with a common interest in science by founding the American Philosophical Society. Its purpose was to pool scientific knowledge and apply it to American life. The response was disappointing, partly because the mail service took up to six weeks to deliver a letter from Boston to Philadelphia, and letters frequently were lost by post riders and postmasters. It was difficult to unite people without reliable communications, and Franklin began considering ways to improve the postal service.

  He took the job of postmaster in Philadelphia, partly to ensure his newspaper, with the largest circulation of any on the continent, regularly was mailed to subscribers. In 1751, when America’s deputy postmaster general died, Franklin applied for the job, and upon his appointment, he went to work to transform the American postal system. For four years, he worked without compensation. Only if the system showed a profit would he get paid; for decades it had been operating at a loss.

  Franklin preferred to learn from experience, and within a few months after his appointment, he began a ten-week journey east, traveling across New Jersey through New York into Connecticut, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts.

  The improvements Franklin achieved were widely praised. He reduced the travel time of a Boston-to-Philadelphia letter from six weeks to three. Abolishing the monopoly in which each postmaster sent the newspaper of his choice through the mail free, he opened the service to all papers for a small fee. He insisted postmasters track their revenue and ordered them to print names of people who had letters waiting for them - a practice he had followed in Philadelphia. If customers did not pick up their letter, the post office delivered it the following day and charged an extra penny. Franklin had tried this first in Philadelphia, and it made the post office more popular. Too often, letters were allowed to sit for weeks and were lost or read by others. After three months, unclaimed letters were forwarded to the central post office in Philadelphia, the first dead-letter office.

  On the roads, Franklin had milestones erected so post riders could pace themselves. By talking with riders and postmasters, Franklin boosted morale. He consulted post riders and postmasters on new roads, fords, and ferries. In three years, he overhauled the service, improving its speed and reliability. In the fourth year of Franklin’s administration, it earned a profit for the first time in history, collecting more revenue in twelve months than it had in the previous thirty-six.

  Traveling was a rugged in the 1750s, and only someone with Franklin’s rugged makeup could have endured the bad weather, terrible roads, and innumerable rivers a traveler had to cross. Taverns and inns were few and often overcrowded. It was difficult to secure a place by the fire, after hours on the road in the rain or cold.

  Once, Fran
klin stopped at a Rhode Island tavern on a rainy day to find two dozen travelers crowded around the room’s only fire.

  “Boy,” Franklin said to the tavern keeper’s son, “get my horse a quart of oysters.”

  “A quart of oysters?” gasped the boy.

  “You heard me, a quart of oysters,” Franklin boomed.

  The boy obeyed, and everyone stampeded out the door to see the horse who ate oysters. The horse refused the oysters. Baffled, the group returned to the tavern to find Deputy Postmaster General Franklin sitting in the chair closest to the fire.

  His job as postmaster allowed Franklin to justify occasional retreats from the pressures of Philadelphia. On one such trip to New England, he met Catherine Ray. Twenty-three years old, she was the first cousin of his brother’s wife. She was charming and beautiful. Franklin called her Caty, and the two grew close over a period of weeks in Boston and then at her family farm in Rhode Island. For months after he returned home, Franklin and Caty exchanged letters. While Franklin was away, he entrusted his son to intercept his mistress’ letters and forward them on to him, so that his wife did not see them. William also arranged for discreet delivery of Franklin’s reply.

  But the long-distance love affair grew cold when a letter was lost in transit, and Franklin, preoccupied with politics, failed to respond to three increasingly breathless pleas for attention. Catherine’s desperation was unnerving: “Surely I have wrote too much and you are affronted with me or have not received my letters, in which I have said a thousand things that nothing should have tempted me to have said to anybody else, for I knew they would be safe with you. I’ll only beg the favor of one line. What is become of my letters? Tell me you are well and forgive me and love me one-thousandth part as well as I do you, and then I will be contented.” Benjamin wrote back with this advice: “Go constantly to meeting or church ‘til you get a good husband, then stay at home and nurse the children and live like a Christian. . . . When I have again the pleasure of seeing you, I may find you like my grape vine, surrounded with clusters, plump, juicy, blushing, pretty little rogues, like their Mama. Adieu.”