Franklin started as a printer's apprentice under his older brother James in Boston, and that was where his genius first came through publicly in his letters, unknowingly published by James Franklin under the female pen name (nomme de plume ... there's another one!) Silence Dogood. He escaped that indenture and migrated to Philadelphia where through sheer hard work, entrepreneurship, careful networking, and trans-colonial publishing (Poor Richard's Almanac), he became well off enough to franchise his business to other colonies and take up his other interests, Natural Philosophy (aka "Science"), invention (Lightening Rod, Franklin Stove, Glass Armonica, etc.), and maybe most importantly to America ... politics.
But it all started with paper, a press, ink, heavy typeset, and a voracious reading public. That's what I meant to imply, not that Franklin was anything but the most remarkable man of his time. He happens to be one of my personal heroes and apparently one of yours too.
Oh, and I’m of Inner Hebrides Scots and German ancestry with two American Indian tribes thrown in for leavening on both sides. But I studied the language, traveled to, and did a lot of business in Japan and admire the art of their sword making. So I took on the nomme de “plume” Katana because it was the first one I tried eighteen years ago that wasn’t already taken.