PIONEERS OF SCIENCE IN AMERICA. 



BENJAMIN FRANKLIN. 



1706-1791. 



No man in the eighteenth century gained a wider fame, or 

 one which has been less modified by the hundred years that 

 have intervened, than Benjamin Franklin. We might be led to 

 believe at first thought that the extraordinary repute into 

 which he rose was relative, and that the world's appreciation 

 of him, and particularly the feeling of his own countrymen, was 

 exaggerated by the surprise that the colonies, then so young 

 and primitive, should have produced so able and versatile a 

 man. But this would be an incorrect view. Franklin's fame 

 was a tribute to his real eminence. The more his life and 

 achievements are studied the more clearly does it appear that 

 Franklin's greatness was of the whole world and would have 

 been as prominent in any age ; and that in any group of 

 leaders of progress, from whatever time or nation they might 

 be selected, he would find his place near the head. 



Franklin's history is so universally familiar that more than 

 a mere reference in this sketch to such of the personal and 

 political events of his life as constitute the staple of most of 

 the biographies of him would be superfluous. Giving the 

 briefest summary of the principal dates, our account will be de- 

 voted to that part of his work which contributed to the ad- 

 vancement of science. 



Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston, January 17, 1706, 

 " the youngest son of the youngest son for five generations," 

 the fifteenth child of his father and the eighth of his mother, 

 who was a second wife, out of a family of seventeen. His 

 father was a Nonconformist emigrant from England, out of an 



