Benjamin Franklin

His face appears on the U.S. one hundred dollar bill.

Inventor of the LightningRod and the FranklinStove?. Discovered that lightning is an electrical phenomenon. The most illustrious Philadelphian ever, responsible for the Poor Richard's Almanac, the early American printing presses, early firehouses, and the first mint. Pretty good for someone who had failed at life by the age of twenty-three. He also invented bifocal lenses, and -- get this, all you free spirits on Wiki -- a version of the day-planner.

An excellent, short overview of his career and accomplishments can be found at:

   http://web.mit.edu/invent/www/inventorsA-H/franklin.html

or, more recently,

   http://web.mit.edu/invent/iow/franklin.html

Ambassador to France during the Revolutionary War.

Rumor has it he worked with CountRumford on improving the design of the masonry fireplace.

BF was also an American literary humorist on a par with SamuelClemens or KurtVonnegut.

His autobiography is online, and it's very funny: http://earlyamerica.com/lives/franklin/

Interestingly, his autobiography ends in 1757. There is nothing about the American Revolution or its aftermath in it.

BF was one of the most widely known Americans in the world before the American Revolution. He wrote his autobiography when he was 51 years old, after he retired from his printing business, and he (correctly) thought his life was pretty full and interesting. Franklin was 70 in 1776 and he was 84 when he died in 1790.

The First American: The Life and Times of Benjamin Franklin

ISBN 0385495404 Is a recent biography that covers his whole life.

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BenjaminFranklin's ThirteenVirtues? is featured in the June 30, 2002 NewYorkTimes Magazine in TheEthicist? Column. An online version of this thirteen virtues is at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/franklin-virtue.html

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