Printer, scientist, diplomat, inventor, abolitionist, Founding Father — Benjamin Franklin didn't just help create America, he invented the idea of what an American could be.
Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston in 1706, the 15th of 17 children of a candle maker. His formal education ended at age 10, but he educated himself voraciously through reading. At 12 he was apprenticed to his printer brother James, and at 15 he was secretly writing popular newspaper columns under the pen name 'Silence Dogood' — a fictional middle-aged widow whose letters became the talk of Boston.
Franklin's scientific achievements were extraordinary for any era. His famous kite experiment in 1752 proved that lightning was electrical in nature, and his invention of the lightning rod saved countless buildings and lives. He also charted the Gulf Stream, invented bifocals, the Franklin stove, and the glass harmonica, and his work on electricity made him one of the leading scientific figures of the Enlightenment.
As a diplomat, Franklin was arguably the most important figure in securing American independence. Sent to France in 1778, he charmed Parisian society and the French court with equal skill, winning the military alliance and financial support from France that proved decisive in the Revolutionary War. He was wildly celebrated in France — his face appeared on medallions, snuffboxes, and rings across the country.
Franklin is the only person to have signed all four of the key documents of American founding: the Declaration of Independence, the Treaty of Alliance with France, the Treaty of Paris (ending the Revolution), and the Constitution. No other Founding Father was present at all four of these defining moments. He attended the Constitutional Convention at age 81, carried to sessions in a sedan chair.
Franklin founded a remarkable number of institutions that still exist today: the University of Pennsylvania, the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia's first fire department, and the first public lending library in America, the Library Company. He organized the first national postal communications network as postmaster general, fundamentally connecting the colonies.
Franklin's legacy is complicated by his slaveholding. He owned at least seven enslaved people and ran slave sale advertisements in his newspaper for years. However, by the late 1750s he began arguing against slavery, and in his final years became a committed abolitionist — his last public act was signing a petition to Congress to abolish slavery, just two months before his death in 1790 at age 84.