Benjamin Franklin is a man without whose influence there likely never would have been a United States of America. It was Franklin who singlehandedly convinced France to enter the Revolutionary War on the side of the colonists and serve as a midwife at the birth of a nation. Absent that coalition, Britain easily would have prevailed.
Franklin respected compromise as a necessary element in negotiations both congressional and international. Had he had his way, America’s federal legislature would be unicameral versus the House and Senate that were brought about.
If he were around today and introduced compromise as a diplomatic tool, it might be counted among Franklin’s many innovations. He was a scientist and inventor fueled by an innate and powerful curiosity. He may fairly be seen as an early exemplar of American ingenuity and a founder of American entrepreneurship. He sought always to find practical applications for his scientific discoveries of which those dealing with electricity are the most renowned.
Franklin would come to be heralded by the French statesman Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot as a man who “snatched lightning from the sky and the scepter from tyrants,” notes biographer Walter Isaacson in Benjamin Franklin: An American Life. It was Franklin, he points out, who developed a lexicon of electrical terms including battery, charged, neutral, condense and conductor.
He gave us the lightning rod after discovering that a pointed piece of metal directed at an electrified metal ball would draw away a charge much more effectively than a blunt one did. The invention represented a great advance over ringing church bells to ward off bolts.
In June 1752 or thereabouts, Franklin flew his soon-to-be-celebrated kite during a storm.
“A sharp wire protruded from its top, and a key was attached near the base of the wet string, so that a wire could be brought near it in an effort to draw sparks,” Isaacson explains. Franklin drew sparks, all right, and collected some of the charge in a jar. News of his experiments crossed the Atlantic as fast as a ship could sail.
For Franklin, the value of a scientific proposition could be measured by its utility. He was an individual, given to the belief that he could best serve God by serving his fellow man, who gave us bifocals, a musical instrument (the armonica), a mechanical arm, a typeface, a urinary catheter and much more.
For the contemporary entrepreneur seeking inspiration, Franklin’s legacy is a good place to start. He was a quintessential one.
