The Age of Invention [2]
by Benj. Franklin" is the proud legend of "The Saturday Evening Post", which carries on, in our own times, the Franklin tradition.
The "Gazette" printed bits of local news, extracts from the London "Spectator", jokes, verses, humorous attacks on Bradford's "Mercury", a rival paper, moral essays by the editor, elaborate hoaxes, and pungent political or social criticism. Often the editor wrote and printed letters to himself, either to emphasize some truth or to give him the opportunity to ridicule some folly in a reply to "Alice Addertongue," "Anthony Afterwit," or other mythical but none the less typical person.
If the countryman did not read a newspaper, or buy books, he was, at any rate, sure to own an almanac. So in 1732 Franklin brought out "Poor Richard's Almanac". Three editions were sold within a few months. Year after year the sayings of Richard Saunders, the alleged publisher, and Bridget, his wife, creations of Franklin's fancy, were printed in the almanac. Years later the most striking of these sayings were collected and published. This work has been translated into as many as twenty languages and is still in circulation today.
Franklin kept a shop in connection with his printing office, where he sold a strange variety of goods: legal blanks, ink, pens, paper, books, maps, pictures, chocolate, coffee, cheese, codfish, soap, linseed oil, broadcloth, Godfrey's cordial, tea, spectacles, rattlesnake root, lottery tickets, and stoves--to mention only a few of the many articles he advertised. Deborah Read, who became his wife in 1730, looked after his house, tended shop, folded and stitched pamphlets, bought rags, and helped him to live economically. "We kept no idle servants, " says Franklin, "our table was plain and simple, our furniture of the cheapest. For instance, my breakfast was a long time bread and milk (no tea), and I ate it out of a twopenny earthen porringer with a pewter spoon."
With all this frugality, Franklin was not a miser; he abhorred the waste of money, not the proper use. His wealth increased rapidly. "I experienced too," he says, "the truth of the observation, 'THAT AFTER GETTING THE FIRST HUNDRED POUND, IT IS MORE EASY TO GET THE SECOND, money itself being of a prolific nature." He gave much unpaid public service and subscribed generously to public purposes; yet he was able, at the early age of forty-two, to turn over his printing office to one of his journeymen, and to retire from active business, intending to devote himself thereafter to such public employment as should come his way, to philosophical or scientific studies, and to amusements.
From boyhood Franklin had been interested in natural phenomena. His "Journal of a Voyage from London to Philadelphia", written at sea as he returned from his first stay in London, shows unusual powers of exact observation for a youth of twenty. Many of the questions he propounded to the Junto had a scientific bearing. He made an original and important invention in 1749, the "Pennsylvania fireplace," which, under the name of the Franklin stove, is in common use to this day, and which brought to the ill-made houses of the time increased comfort and a great saving of fuel. But it brought Franklin no pecuniary reward, for he never deigned to patent any of his inventions.
His active, inquiring mind played upon hundreds of questions in a dozen different branches of science. He studied smoky chimneys; he invented bifocal spectacles; he studied the effect of oil upon ruffled water; he identified the "dry bellyache" as lead poisoning; he preached ventilation in the days when windows were closed tight at night, and upon the sick at all times; he investigated fertilizers in agriculture. Many of his suggestions have since borne fruit, and his observations show that he foresaw some of the great developments of the nineteenth century.
His fame in science rests chiefly upon his discoveries in electricity. On a visit to Boston in 1746 he saw some electrical experiments and at once became deeply interested. Peter Collinson of London, a Fellow of the
The "Gazette" printed bits of local news, extracts from the London "Spectator", jokes, verses, humorous attacks on Bradford's "Mercury", a rival paper, moral essays by the editor, elaborate hoaxes, and pungent political or social criticism. Often the editor wrote and printed letters to himself, either to emphasize some truth or to give him the opportunity to ridicule some folly in a reply to "Alice Addertongue," "Anthony Afterwit," or other mythical but none the less typical person.
If the countryman did not read a newspaper, or buy books, he was, at any rate, sure to own an almanac. So in 1732 Franklin brought out "Poor Richard's Almanac". Three editions were sold within a few months. Year after year the sayings of Richard Saunders, the alleged publisher, and Bridget, his wife, creations of Franklin's fancy, were printed in the almanac. Years later the most striking of these sayings were collected and published. This work has been translated into as many as twenty languages and is still in circulation today.
Franklin kept a shop in connection with his printing office, where he sold a strange variety of goods: legal blanks, ink, pens, paper, books, maps, pictures, chocolate, coffee, cheese, codfish, soap, linseed oil, broadcloth, Godfrey's cordial, tea, spectacles, rattlesnake root, lottery tickets, and stoves--to mention only a few of the many articles he advertised. Deborah Read, who became his wife in 1730, looked after his house, tended shop, folded and stitched pamphlets, bought rags, and helped him to live economically. "We kept no idle servants, " says Franklin, "our table was plain and simple, our furniture of the cheapest. For instance, my breakfast was a long time bread and milk (no tea), and I ate it out of a twopenny earthen porringer with a pewter spoon."
With all this frugality, Franklin was not a miser; he abhorred the waste of money, not the proper use. His wealth increased rapidly. "I experienced too," he says, "the truth of the observation, 'THAT AFTER GETTING THE FIRST HUNDRED POUND, IT IS MORE EASY TO GET THE SECOND, money itself being of a prolific nature." He gave much unpaid public service and subscribed generously to public purposes; yet he was able, at the early age of forty-two, to turn over his printing office to one of his journeymen, and to retire from active business, intending to devote himself thereafter to such public employment as should come his way, to philosophical or scientific studies, and to amusements.
From boyhood Franklin had been interested in natural phenomena. His "Journal of a Voyage from London to Philadelphia", written at sea as he returned from his first stay in London, shows unusual powers of exact observation for a youth of twenty. Many of the questions he propounded to the Junto had a scientific bearing. He made an original and important invention in 1749, the "Pennsylvania fireplace," which, under the name of the Franklin stove, is in common use to this day, and which brought to the ill-made houses of the time increased comfort and a great saving of fuel. But it brought Franklin no pecuniary reward, for he never deigned to patent any of his inventions.
His active, inquiring mind played upon hundreds of questions in a dozen different branches of science. He studied smoky chimneys; he invented bifocal spectacles; he studied the effect of oil upon ruffled water; he identified the "dry bellyache" as lead poisoning; he preached ventilation in the days when windows were closed tight at night, and upon the sick at all times; he investigated fertilizers in agriculture. Many of his suggestions have since borne fruit, and his observations show that he foresaw some of the great developments of the nineteenth century.
His fame in science rests chiefly upon his discoveries in electricity. On a visit to Boston in 1746 he saw some electrical experiments and at once became deeply interested. Peter Collinson of London, a Fellow of the