DD's article - Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin was well known for his many inventions. He was a man of
high ideals and standards. His life included many aspects other than being a revolutionary. If he were to somehow come back a hundred years after his death and look
around and see his inventions in most homes he would have been proud. Some of his
main inventions were the lightening rod, the Franklin stove, the odometer, bifocals, and
the armonica. Many people offered him money for his inventions but he turned them
down. He did not want to make a profit; all he wanted was to make life easier for people.
Many people say that Benjamin Franklin was most famous for his works with
electricity. One of his most famous inventions was the lightening rod. In 1752 he
conducted a kite experiment in which he tied a key to a silk kite and proved that
lightening is a form of electricity.
To Benjamin the value of a life was quite high. He clearly looked to helping his society through his inventions. His knowledge of electricity led him to work on a major problem in his town. During the 1700’s lightening was a major cause of fires. Buildings caught on fire and kept on burning because the houses back then were made of wood. So Benjamin Franklin decided to attach a tall metal rod to the side of a house. One end of the rod pointed up into the sky, while the other end was connected to a cable, which stretched down into the ground. The rod attracted lightening and sent the electrical charges to the ground. After the lightening rod was invented, the amount of fires greatly decreased.
Another one of his inventions was the Franklin stove. Fireplaces were the main
source of heat in the 17th century, most of which were very inefficient. They produced a
lot of smoke and the heat generated through the fireplace mainly went right out the
chimney. Since the old stoves were mainly built of wood and iron, they burnt very easily. So, Franklin developed a new type of stove with a hood- like enclosure in the front and an air box in the back. The Franklin stove was much more efficient. It only used a quarter of the wood the old stoves used and it generated twice as much heat.
In 1737 Benjamin Franklin was assigned the job of postmaster general. He had to
figure out routes for delivering the mail, so he went out riding to measure the routes.
There were so many different measurements and Benjamin had a hard time keeping track
of the measures. That led him to inventing the simple odometer which he attached to his
carriage every time he delivered mail. By counting the rotations of the wheels, the
odometer calculated the distance the carriage traveled to each location. The odometer was
connected to a trigger bell which rang every twenty rods along the road.
Benjamin Franklin was getting old. He had a hard time seeing close up and at a
distance. It was very tiring to change from one pair of glasses to another, so he devised a
way to have both lenses fit in one frame, and so the bifocals were invented. The near-
sighted lenses were placed on the top and the far- sighted lenses on the bottom. Many
people benefited from the bifocals. Instead of switching glasses all the time all they had
to do was wear bifocals!
One day in 1761, Benjamin saw William Deleval playing what looked like water
filled wine glasses. Franklin worked with a London glassblower and rearranged the
position of the glass pieces. Finally the invention of the armonica came about. It was
named after the Italian word for harmony. In Franklin’s version of the armonica, the glass pieces were mounted on a horizontal spindle and the whole spindle was turned by a foot operated treadle. Sound was produced by rubbing the rims of the glass pieces with moistened fingers.
Benjamin Franklin was much more than a revolutionary. His simple yet useful
inventions and experiments made the world a better place to live. Benjamin Franklin once
said: "As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others we should be glad of
an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and
generously." And that is what he truly believed in. He did not invent all those items for money; he invented them so life would be easier for mankind.