Benjamin Franklin (January 17 1706 – April 17, 1790) was one of the most important Founding Fathers of the United States. He was a leading author, political theorist, politician, printer, scientist, inventor, civic activist, and diplomat. As a scientist he was a major figure in the history of physics for his discoveries and theories regarding electricity. As a political writer and activist he, more than anyone, invented the idea of an American nation, and as a diplomat during the American Revolution, he secured the French alliance that helped to make independence possible.

Franklin was famous for his curiosity, his writings (popular, political and scientific), his inventions, and his diversity of interests. As a leader of the Enlightenment, he gained the recognition of scientists and intellectuals across Europe. An agent in London before the Revolution, and Minister to France during the war, he, more than anyone else, defined the new nation in the minds of Europe. His success in securing French military and financial aid was a great contributor to the American victory over Britain. He invented the lightning rod, bifocals, the iron furnace stove (also known as the Franklin stove), a carriage odometer and a musical instrument known as the armonica. He was an early proponent of colonial unity. Many historians hail him as the "First American."

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Franklin learned printing from his older brother and became a newspaper editor, printer, and merchant in Philadelphia, becoming very wealthy. In 1718, at the age of 12, Benjamin Franklin began in apprentice service to his half-brother, James, in the printing business and continued until he was twenty-one. In the printing business, he improved in spelling and punctuation. In his autobiography, he accounts that he schooled himself in composition because it was not taught in reading or writing schools at that time. Here he provides another piece of documentation that writing was defined as penmanship. Franklin attributed his improvement in composition to writing down his arguments for friendly debates and his father’s suggestions to style, organization and insightfulness. Another contributing factor toward improving his compositions proved to be comparing his notes, recreations, and reorganization to models of good writing. His successful approaches to self-instruction in compositions led him to design a school in Philadelphia in 1740 where he advocated that students write legibly, read the “best” writers, model their own writing after the “best” writers, form their own style by writing letters to others, write abstracts and retellings of what they read in their own words. In 1749, Franklin voiced his idea in his Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth where he stressed the importance of using writing as a tool for thinking, increasing comprehension through retelling, and communicating with others. This sounds familiar to what we stress today as goals in writing.

He spent many years in England and published the famous Poor Richard's Almanac and the Pennsylvania Gazette. He formed both the first public lending library and fire department in America as well as the Junto, a political discussion club. During this period he wrote in favor of paper money, against mercantilist policies such as the Iron Act of 1750, and also drafted, in 1754, the Albany Plan of Union, which would have created a continental legislature; demonstrating how early he conceived of the colonies as being naturally one political unit.

Franklin became a national hero in America when he spearheaded the effort to have Parliament repeal the unpopular Stamp Act. An accomplished diplomat, he was widely admired among the French as American minister to Paris and was a major figure in the development of positive Franco-American relations. From 1775 to 1776, Franklin was Postmaster General under the Continental Congress and from 1785 to 1788 was President of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania. Toward the end of his life, he became one of the most prominent abolitionists.

Franklin was interested in science and technology, carrying out his famous electricity experiments and inventing — in addition to the lightning rod — the Franklin stove, catheter, swimfins, glass harmonica, and bifocals. He also played a major role in establishing the University of Pennsylvania and Franklin and Marshall College. He was elected the first president of the American Philosophical Society, the oldest learned society in the United States, in 1769. Fluent in six languages, English, French, Italian, Spanish, Latin, and German, he is generally recognized as a polymath.

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