Benjamin Franklin
1706 – 1790 · United States · Physics, Literature, Engineering
Electricity, bifocals, and the American public sphere.
Index entry
Benjamin Franklin is currently a short index entry. The research desk can draft the full profile — achievements, works, living legacy and what is documented about the family line.
Expand this profileContinuity of ideas
Who shaped Benjamin Franklin, and who they shaped
Inherited from
No upstream links recorded yet.
Passed the work to3
- Alessandro Volta
1745 – 1827 · Physics, Chemistry
Volta's electrostatic work begins from Franklin's experiments on charge and the Leyden jar.
- Michael Faraday
1791 – 1867 · Physics, Chemistry
Franklin's single-fluid theory of electricity and his charge conventions are what Faraday's field work refined.
- Thomas Edison
1847 – 1931 · Engineering
The Franklin model of the inventor-entrepreneur-publicist is Edison's template.
Sources and references
Numbered markers in the text above point to the entries below. Each links to a primary document, archival collection or scholarly reference where the claim about Benjamin Franklin can be checked.
- 1.Primary texts and first editions by or about Benjamin Franklin
Internet Archive · Primary source
- 2.Catalogued holdings and archival finding aids for Benjamin Franklin
WorldCat (OCLC) · Archive
Nearby in the annals
Ibn al-Haytham
965 – 1040Founded optics and the experimental method in the Book of Optics.
Christiaan Huygens
1629 – 1695Wave theory of light, the pendulum clock, Saturn's rings.
Isaac Newton
1643 – 1727Showed that one law governs the apple and the Moon alike.