326 HISTORY OF SCIENCE. 



as some one has said, than the refinement of common sense. The 

 illustrious American, whose name is prominent in the history of elec- 

 tricity in the eighteenth century, had apparently no training which 

 specially qualified him for scientific researches. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 

 was born at Boston, in North America, on the i;th of January, 1706, 

 he being almost the youngest of a family of seventeen children. Frank- 

 lin's father had emigrated from England about twenty-four years before, 

 and he followed in Boston the occupation of soap-boiler and tallow- 

 chandler, and apparently with only very moderate success. When only 

 ten years of age, Benjamin had to assist in his father's business ; but 

 as this proved very distasteful to him, he was two years afterwards 

 apprenticed to an elder brother as a printer, one of the considerations 

 which caused this calling to be fixed upon being Benjamin's fondness 

 for books. He became clever at his business, but continued to follow 

 various literary studies with great assiduity. At seventeen years of 

 age Franklin arrived at New York in search of employment, and passed 

 from thence to Philadelphia ; but soon afterwards made his way to 

 London. Here he learnt the newest processes in his craft, and after 

 about eighteen months' stay he returned to Philadelphia in his twenty- 

 first year. There he eventually established himself as a printer .and 

 stationer, and there he was elected to fill important public offices. 



Franklin was a man of original and independent mind, untrammelled 

 with any of those prepossessions which a training in the science of 

 the schools would in some degree have entailed, In 1746 and 1747 

 Franklin was informed by a correspondent of the electrical discoveries 

 which had produced so great an impression in Europe, and he had 

 sent out to him some apparatus for the experiments. Franklin's dis- 

 coveries in electricity were communicated to a friend in England 

 named Peter Collinson, who was a member of the Royal Society, in 

 a series of letters containing short and simple accounts of detached 

 experiments. From these we shall collect the general outline of the 

 important researches by which Franklin contributed to the progress 

 of the science of his day. There are two points on which Franklin's 

 electrical labours were concentrated, the one theoretical, the other 

 experimental. The former precedes in order of time. The importance 

 of some theoretical views as a guide through the intricate labyrinth of 

 innumerable facts has been referred to already in these pages. The 

 theory by which Franklin proposed to explain the facts of electricity 

 proved of very great service in the development of the science. What 

 this theory was, and by what facts he supported it, we may now 

 proceed to consider. 



The great question that presented itself to Franklin's mind was 

 this : Is electricity created de novo by the friction of the glass tube, or 

 is it merely communicated to the glass from other bodies ? He resorted 

 to a simple experiment to get some solution of this question. Standing 

 on a cake of resin, so as to cut off all electrical communication with 



