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Benjamin Franklin
THE JOURNALIST OF THE SCIENCE.-
Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston, 17th January 1706.He was an autodidactic person that, when he was 10 years old, he was working in the little industry of soaps and candles that his father had in Boston.
When he was an adolescent he was more interested in reading than in any other thing.He himself tell us in this Autobiography:
“From my infancy I was very interested in reading, and all the money that I got, was to buy books.(...)My first collection was John Bunyan plays that I I later sold to buy Historical Compilations of Richard Burton, little cheap books, more or less 40 or 50 copies.Most of the books of the library of my father were about religion, and I read most of them.(...)There was a book of Defoe and other of the Dr. Mather that maybe showed me a new way of thinking, that had a lot of importance in some of the main events in my future life”
In 1720 he begun working with his brother James in The New England Courant the second newspaper that appeared in the Northamerican colonies of England.There he published his 1st article using a pseudonym and changing his writing.This article contains the fundamental ideas that he followed during his whole life.One of the most representative articles that he published with the pseudonym of Mrs. Silence Dogood, was the one related to the freedom of thinking;he wrote it when he was 16 and it was published as if it was an extract of the newspaper of London.
Benjamin Franklin was a person that believed in the capacity of improving of the individual.He also thought that Science could help to make life easier and healthier.With his newspaper Pennsylvania Gazette he expanded the idea of believing in science.
The field he was more interested in was electricity, where he got his main success:The lightning Conductor.In 1753 the Real Society of London conceded him the Copley Medal for his investigations in electricity.
He was considered the most important scientific of the century and the French Academy of Science named him one of the 8 biggest scientifics of the time.
CHRONICLER OF HIS OWN LIFE.-
His autobiography that he called Memories was written for his son in the summer of 1771.It is said that this work took him only 2 weeks.Is an easy to read book with a clear moral sense.This familiar document that began with the words “Dear son”, was corrected and reviewed years later, and then published.Since then, his Biography has been read in all America and it has been translated to almost all languages.
In this book is told how his father arrived to America with 3 sons, and there he had 14 more.He had 7 sons with his first wife, and 10 with the second one, Franklin’s mother, Abiah Folger.Frankling was the younger one, and in his biography he tells us how he begun to study religion, and how he left this to start working with his father.
When he was working with his brother James, he start loving [next page]