[HWGruene]

Benjamin Franklin, also called Ben Franklin, pseudonym Richard Saunders (born January 17 [January 6, Old Style], 1706, Boston, Massachusetts [U.S.]—died April 17, 1790, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.), American printer and publisher, author, inventor and scientist, and diplomat. One of the foremost of the Founding Fathers, Franklin helped draft the Declaration of Independence and was one of its signers, represented the United States in France during the American Revolution, and was a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. He made important contributions to science, especially in the understanding of electricity, and is remembered for the wit, wisdom, and elegance of his writing.

[heterosupremacist]

I always have considered Ben as a hero. I often quote him & this is one of my favorites, “He that is good for making excuses is seldom good for anything else.”

Brings to mind our POTUS, doesn’t it?

[Fiddlstix]

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[dhs12345]

He also established the direction of the flow of current in a wire. A standard that is used today.

[Albion Wilde]

bump for latere

[grey_whiskers]

Rise, and address “Powerful Goodness.”

[Albion Wilde]

Very well written summation of his life. I had the benefit of living in Philadelphia for many years and experiencing at first hand the many, many institutions he founded that survive to this day and were widely copied or promulgated elsewhere. I visited his gravesite several times and am still amazed at how humble it is. He was a thinker so far ahead of his time, we are only now seeing the threatened unmaking of his many innovations of practical genius. The last paragraph of your excellent article says much about that:

Following his death in 1790, he became so identified during the 19th century with the persona of his Autobiography and the Poor Richard maxims of his almanac—e.g., “Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise”—that he acquired the image of the self-made moralist obsessed with the getting and saving of money. Consequently, many imaginative writers, such as Edgar Allan Poe, Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville, Mark Twain, and D.H. Lawrence, attacked Franklin as a symbol of America’s middle-class moneymaking business values. Indeed, early in the 20th century the famous German sociologist Max Weber found Franklin to be the perfect exemplar of the “Protestant ethic” and the modern capitalistic spirit. Although Franklin did indeed become a wealthy tradesman by his early 40s, when he retired from his business, during his lifetime in the 18th century he was not identified as a self-made businessman or a budding capitalist. That image was a creation of the 19th century. But as long as America continues to be pictured as the land of enterprise and opportunity, where striving and hard work can lead to success, then that image of Franklin is the one that is likely to endure.