if you want to emphasis the concept of contributing “inventions” to society for free and open use, you might want to also include mention of such notables as Nicolas Appert (canned food during the Napoleonic wars of 1812), Louis Pasteur (pasteurization) and the French Government (who in 1839, made the process of photographic development by Daguerre, i.e., the invention of daguerreotype,”free to the world”

regarding Ben Franklin’s contributions to technology, his greatest is the concept of tying together natural electrical phenomena with made-made static electricity with his famous kite experiment (1752), and his description of condensation of charge (i.e., capacitors) as demonstrated by the Leyden Jar, and the identification of positive and negative charges, all of which laid the groundwork for Sir J.J. Thompson’s discovery of the electron in the early 1900s, as well as for various other notables such as Faraday, Galvani, Volta, Oersted, Ampere, Ohm - thus, without Ben Franklin’s contributions to the field of electricity (free to the world), we might not be communicating in this medium called the “Internet” until decades or more later - he obviously preferred to contribute to science and technology, thereby helping the greatest number of people, rather than to be a minister, following the footsteps of his father - THANKS SO MUCH, BEN, for bucking the trend!

Francis Lorin
siberkhem.com

-Hannah

LOL — Are you for real? :-)

You can try Ben’s page on Wikipedia, and I gave the link to his autobiography at Project Gutenberg in the excerpt above.

I really enjoyed the biography by H.W. Brands: The First American. It’s a long one at 800 pages, so you’ll probably want to start it sometime before the night before your report is due.

THANK YOU