Community Chat

[ScarletDove]

---

@Oznell wrote:

Especially love the all-around brilliance of Benjamin Franklin, among the Founding Fathers.

He amazes, in that his accomplishments and interests are almost *too* numerous --  impossible to give justice to them even in a long historical tome!

His father, Josiah, had come to the colonies from England.  He made candles and soap, and had been a farmer and blacksmith.  Benjamin was his fifteenth child, one of 17.

Benjamin had no cushy legacy--  he exemplified the drive of the industrious middle class.  He had about 2 years of formal education.

HIs contributions to man's understanding of electricity might be the most famous of his scientific and technical pursuits.  But he invented everything from the highly complicated to the very simple, including the Franklin stove, bifocals, the lightning rod, the flexible urinary catheter, a library chair that flipped to become a stepladder (so handy in the book stacks), and on and on.

He declined to patent any of his inventions, reasoning that he had benefited from others' inventions in the past, so he was just "passing it on", so to speak.  Very revealing of his character.

He wanted to write, and got started as a teenager penning letters to a publication under the comical name "Silence Dogood".    Right there you can see what a wry and compelling character was the juvenile Franklin, right from the start.

No one is faultless, but how lucky for America that a mind like his was intimately involved in, among other things, helping draft the Declaration of Independence, and working with the other Framers, through the Constitutional Convention, to bring about the United States of America.

Hope everyone has a safe and happy Independence Day.   

@Oznell   Thank you...beautiful portrait of Founding Father Benjamin Franklin!  Best to you this Independence Day!

---

[Oznell]

Thanks, @ScarletDove ,  and hope you enjoyed yours!