Drive Thru History with Dave Stotts: in this clip from our American History (Columbus to the Constitution) series, take a throwback with Dave and learn the story of Benjamin Franklin!
Ben Franklin started his life as an extremely successful printer. He learned the trade from his older brother and moved from Boston, where he was born, to Philadelphia, where he became the publisher of The Pennsylvania Gazette. He also distributed a wildly popular yearly almanac under the pseudonym, Richard Saunders. He called it Poor Richard’s Almanac.
As a scientist, Ben Franklin took the world by storm, conducting experiments in electricity, what they called at that time, electrical fluid. Some of his experiments became legendary. On a stormy June day in 1752, Ben Franklin, along with his son, William, flew a kite with a wire poking out of it. As the Philadelphia skies darkened, and the kite’s string bristled with electricity, Franklin brought his knuckles close to a brass key dangling from the end of the string. A spark leaped through the air, giving him a powerful jolt, thus proving that lightning, at the time a rather mysterious phenomenon, was simply electricity. This, along with other experiments, led to Franklin’s invention of the lightning rod, a device that has protected untold numbers of buildings and lives to this day.
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