A Page from Poor Richard's Almanac.
You might think that Franklin was busy enough with all this work; still, he managed to learn a great deal besides French, German, Spanish, and Italian, which he studied alone and at night. He founded the first public library in Philadelphia, the University of Pennsylvania, and the first fire brigade, the first insurance company, and the first hospital in the city. Besides that, he invented the first good stove, advised paving the streets, and was constantly in political office from the time he was thirty until he died, at the age of eighty-four.
Franklin was so interested in sciences that he studied them closely, too; and in 1752, after thinking the matter over a long while, he decided that lightning must be the same thing as the electricity produced by rubbing a cat's fur. He therefore determined to bring lightning down from the clouds, to find out whether he was right. After many experiments, he built a kite, fastened a sharp point to it, and flew it one stormy day. He had taken all his measures so carefully that he thus really drew down some electric sparks from the sky.
As Franklin was a very practical man, he immediately made use of this knowledge to invent lightning rods for protecting churches and houses from thunderbolts. His discovery, ridiculed at first, soon became known abroad, and thus Franklin was the first American who won a European reputation.
Franklin's kite-flying paved the way for all the wonderful discoveries since made in electricity, many of which he then foretold, although people thought he was only joking. Indeed, we are told he even demonstrated the deadly effect of a live wire by killing a turkey on the other side of the river! When his discoveries became known in Europe, they created a great sensation, and the "Franklin experiments" were for a while all the fashion.
LV. BRADDOCK'S DEFEAT.
In 1754, Franklin, deputy postmaster-general of the colonies, was sent to Albany, where, as we have already seen, a congress of delegates from the colonies met to discuss the best way of opposing the French. Franklin, knowing that it was only by working all together that the best results could be reached, now made a plan for the union of the colonies.