Benjamin Franklin was born on January 17, 1706, in Boston. His father, Josiah Franklin,had seventeen children Benjamin was the fifteenth child and the tenth son. His mother Abiah Folger, was his father's second wife. After Benjamin's attendance at grammar school from age eight to ten, he then was taken ito his father's business. However he did not find making candles and soap to be a very interesting job. In 1721 Benjamin became an apprenticed to his brother James, who established the New England Courant. Benjamin often wrote articles under the name "Mrs. Silence Dogood".
After a disagreement be Benjamin and his brother James, Benjamin left Boston and made his way to Philadelphia. There he worked at his trade. He went to London tocomplete his training as a printer and to purchase the equipment needed to start his own printing company in Philadelphia. Things did not go well for Benjamin, things that were promised to him did not happen. So once again, young Franklin found himself once again without means in a strange city.
These kinds of happenens did not hold Benjamin down for one minute. In 1730 he married Deborah Read, a Philadelphia woman whom he had known before his trip to England. Benjamin also founded what was probably the first public library in America, charted in 1742 as the Philadelphia Library. He published Poor Richard's Almanack in 1732, under the pen name Richard Saunders. He gained a wide audience, and exerted a perasive influence upon the American character.
Benjamin Franklin head was filled with wonderful ideas, like nethods for the improvement of street paving and lighting. He devised means to correct the excessive smoking of chimneys and invented, around 1744, the Franklin stove, which furnished greater heat with less use of fuel. He began his electrical experiments in 1747. Benjamin flew a kite during a thunderstorm to prove that lightning is a form of electricity.
