The Art of Money-Getting

A plum for young men on the rise, from the ...


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Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) was a leading author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, musician, inventor, satirist, civic activist, statesman, diplomat, and a Founding Father of the United States. His scientific work with electricity made him a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics. He invented the lightning rod, bifocals, the Franklin stove, and a carriage odometer. He formed both the first public lending library in America and the first fire department in Pennsylvania. He began writing his Autobiography in 1771, took it up again in 1784, and then once more in 1788 when he returned to Philadelphia. These three parts carried the story of his life to 1757, and that is how it was printed up to the time of John Bigelow’s first edition in 1867. That edition contained a fourth part, consisting of a few pages written late in 1789. Franklin died in the spring of 1790.