BENJAMIN FRANKLIN: SCHOLAR, SCIENTIST, DIPLOMAT ... AND JOURNALIST
Benjamin Franklin was born the youngest of 17 children to a Boston soap and candlemaker in 1706.
His father had only so much money to spend on Franklin’s education. “I do not remember when I could not read,” he would write in his posthumously published autobiography. He learned at an early age he would have to educate himself on the topics that interested him.
That turned out to be a lot of topics. He started out at age 12 as a printer’s apprentice but began attracting notice with satirical essays he wrote under the pen name of a middle-aged widow.
Franklin left his apprenticeship early — which was illegal at the time — moved to Philadelphia and by early adulthood had founded a print shop, won the contract to print paper currency for Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware and Maryland and had become one of the wealthiest men in the colonies.
In his spare time, he studied science — nearly any elementary schooler today can repeat the story of Franklin’s experiment to determine whether or not lightning is a form of electricity.
In 1729, Franklin and a business partner founded the Pennsylvania Gazette. Three years later, he’d begin publishing a yearly almanac under the pen name Richard Saunders. He’d publish “Poor Richard’s Almanack” for 26
Franklin became involved in Philadelphia politics, serving as a city councilman, a justice of the peace and as a member of the Pennsylvania assembly. He was appointed postmaster in 1737, responsible for all the colonies north and east, including Newfoundland. He helped write the Declaration of Independence, served as an envoy to Great Britain and then to France.
Would a man with so many interests and abilities spend time doing the elaborate woodcutting work required to create an editorial cartoon in 1754? Most likely yes, wrote J.A. Leo Lemay of the University of Delaware in a 1987 essay for The Pennsylvania Magazine of History & Biography.
“Many printers, including Franklin, made their own woodcuts and carefully designed the visual appearance of their broadsides, newspapers, pamphlets and books,” Lemay wrote.
“He could draw, make woodcuts and engrave and he emphasized the importance of some art training in his writing on education,” Lemay wrote. “But he did not think of himself as an artist. Nevertheless, he is among the most visually conscious writers of eighteenth-century America: he frequently used emblems, devices and visual pictures and he deliberately attempted to create visual effects through his writing.”