Benjamin Franklin's Accomplishments

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U.S. Founding Fathers George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton and John Adams all made contributions of a practical kind to the beginnings of American society. It was Benjamin Franklin, though, who embodied the inventiveness and sheer creative energy that would mark our American character.

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Franklin was a self-made man who rose to international importance in equal parts as inventor, scientist, revolutionary, and statesman. Benjamin Franklin was humbly raised as the 10th son of a Puritan soap maker in Colonial New England. The remarkable course of his life led him to become the era’s most celebrated scientist and diplomat. His life story reveals quite a bit about the opportunity and promise for advancement our young

He founded America’s first lending library, a university, the first postal service, and a respected scholarly society. He became a devoted citizen of his adopted hometown of Philadelphia, which when he arrived in 1723 was a far larger city than either New York or Boston. Franklin considered his scientific experiments and inventions, including bifocal lenses and a smoke-free wood-burning stove, as a type of public service. He never patented1 or took money for any of his inventions.

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“An inventor is someone who sees the world for what it can be, not what it is now,” says Saul Griffith, a young engineer and inventor. “Franklin’s life proves that invention really is about change, dissatisfaction with the way things currently are, and a drive to create a better way of doing things.”

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It was in this spirit that Franklin and his younger colleagues, such as Jefferson, Adams, and John Hancock, set about inventing a new nation. Franklin first thought that a form of self-governing union with the British Empire would be best, but soon he came to recognize that a new nation of free citizens had been born in the American Colonies. Its destiny could only be fulfilled through

Isaacson believes Franklin would have made extensive use of the Internet to spread information. “He was a great inventor; he was very technologically advanced. He believed in figuring out business plans or how you could make some new technology work. So I suspect he would be sort of publishing his own website; he would be enjoying the new technology. This is why we relate to him,” Isaacson said in an interview with U.S. public television during a celebration of Franklin’s 300th birthday in