In the Pennsylvania Gazette, a citizen asked editor Franklin the following question: "If A found out that his neighbor B was sleeping with his wife, was he justified in telling B's wife, and persuading her to seek a little revenge with A?" The editor's response: "If an ass kicks me, should I kick him again? (#4)" His business expanded further when he contracted to do the public printing of the province, and established partnerships with printers in other colonies
He also operated a bookshop and became clerk of the Pennsylvania Assembly and postmaster of Philadelphia (#3). Civic Leader & Scientist In 1727, Franklin began his career as a civic leader by organizing a club of aspiring tradesmen called the Junto. They aspired to build their own businesses, insure the growth of Philadelphia, and improve the quality of its life. Franklin led the Junto in founding a library (1731), fire company (1736), learned society (1743), college (later the University of Pennsylvania, 1749), and an insurance company and a hospital (1751). The group also carried out plans for paving, cleaning, and lighting the streets and for making them safe by organizing an efficient night watch. They even formed a voluntary militia (#1). Franklin had steadily extended his own knowledge by study of foreign languages, philosophy, and science. He repeated experiments of other scientists and added his own ideas that led to inventions of the Franklin stove, bifocal eyeglasses, and a glass harmonica. The phenomenon of electricity interested him deeply, in 1748 he turned his printing business over to his foreman, intending to devote his life to science (#5). Experiments he proposed, showed that lightning was in fact a form of electricity. Later that year his famous kite experiment, in which he flew a kite with the wire attached to a key during a thunderstorm, further established that laboratory-produced static electricity was akin to a previously mysterious and terrifying natural phenomenon (#1).