Caption: While most almanacs were sold locally, Benjamin Franklin published his “improved” Poor Richard for 1748 in three versions, for New England, the Middle Colonies, and the South. This copy of the southern version included information on courts in Virginia and the Carolinas.
Printed and sold by B. Franklin, 1746
Caption: By the time America had won its freedom from Britain in 1783, Benjamin Franklin was already considered one of the world's most gifted scientific minds. Some twenty-six years after Franklin's death, Benjamin West painted this allegorical portrait of the good Doctor drawing electricity from a key into his hand. Angels assist him both by holding the string and guarding the bottles of electricity he has collected. One of the angels is depicted as a Native American.
Courtesy Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pa.
Caption: Explanation of the Illustration of the Franklin Stove Plates, Philadelphia: Printed and Sold by B. Franklin, 1744.
Courtesy of American Memory
Caption: In the early 1760s Benjamin Franklin began to tinker the musical glasses, fitting thirty-seven glass bowls on a horizontal spindle turned by a foot pedal and played with wet fingers. Franklin's glass armonica soon became a sensation in Europe. Queen Marie Antoinette took lessons on it, and both Mozart and Beethoven composed music for an instrument.
Courtesy of American Memory
Caption: In the summer of 1743 while on a visit to Boston, Benjamin Franklin enjoyed an evening of entertainment by an itinerant scientific showman named Dr. Archibald Spencer. Spencer's repertoire of electrical tricks included the creation of static electricity by rubbing a glass tube. "Being on a subject quite new to me" Franklin remembered, "they equally surprised and pleased me." Upon returning to Philadelphia, Franklin began a lifelong pursuit of electrical experimentation and study, which would help transform a simple parlor trick into a practical science. By the 1750s, Franklin was considered one of the world's leading experts on electricity.
Courtesy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, United States Department of Commerce
Caption: Representation of waterspout accompanying "Water-spouts and Whirlwinds" by Benjamin Franklin, 1806.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, United States Department of Commerce.
Caption: The Gulf Stream by Benjamin Franklin, c. 1782.
National Oceanic and Atmospheric Association, United States Department of Commerce.
Caption: Franklin's theory of the wind field associated with a waterspout showing the winds rushing in directly from all quarters as opposed to a spiral wind pattern from an area surrounding the spout. 1806
In "The complete works in philosophy, politics, and morals, of the late Dr. Benjamin Franklin ....", 1806. Volume II, p. 26.
Caption: Illustration accompanying "Sundry Maritime Observations," by Benjamin Franklin, 1786.
American Philosophical Society Library
Caption: Benjamin Franklin is credited with the invention of bifocal glasses, which he sketched here for his friend George Whatley, a London merchant and pamphleteer. Benjamin Franklin to George Whatley, May 23, 1785.
Library of Congress
Caption: Includes inset of North Atlantic and text in left margin "Remarks upon the navigation from Newfoundland to New-York, in order to avoid the Gulph Stream on one hand, and on the other the shoals that lie to the southward of Nantucket and of St. George's Banks," by B. Franklin. Appears in the Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, 1786.
Library of Congress Geography and Map Division Washington, D.C.
Caption: Figures illustrating the first publication of Franklin's electrical experiments. In Experiments and Observations on Electricity, made at Philadelphia in America ... 1751
Edgar Fahs Smith collection, Annenberg Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania
Caption: A caricature of Franklin melting the works of earlier authors in order to create his own pot of "anecdotes", by Grimm, H. S. 1789.
Edgar Fahs Smith collection, Annenberg Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania
Caption: The art of making money plenty in every man's pocket, by Doctor Franklin. New York Published by P. Maverick, 1817
Caption: Franklin's original electrical machine, 1745.
Courtesy NYPL Digital gallery, New York Public Library
Caption: Benjamin Franklin's printing press
History of Chester County Pennsylvania, 1881.
Caption: Frontispiece and title page in Experiments and observations of electricity Benjamin Franklin London, 1774.
Caption: The Paxton Boys Massacre sparked a pamphlet war in Pennsylvania between those who opposed and supported their actions. Benjamin Franklin wrote and published this anti-Paxton Boys tract in 1764.
Shadek-Fackenthal Library, Franklin and Marshall College
Caption: Benjamin Franklin's Printing Shop
Image Donated by Corbis-Bettmann