Benjamin Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers on the United States and an inventor credited with creating the lightning rod, glass harmonica, urinary catheter, bifocal glasses and Franklin stove. Even though Benjamin Franklin never patented any of his own inventions, he was an advocate for inventor's rights and was responsible for seeing to it that a passage was inserted into the U. S. Constitution guaranteeing limited terms for patents and copyrights.

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Ben Franklin

Benjamin Franklin was the first to document electrical properties as positive and negative. After Franklin's famous experiment of flying a kite during a lightening storm, he documented that lightening is in fact electricity.

Franklin was insulated from the charge or else he would have been electrocuted as were other scientists who followed with similar experiments. This "go fly a kite" incident lead to Benjamin Franklin's theories of grounding the electrical charge which lead to the invention of the lightning rod.

Because of Benjamin Franklin's work with the lightning rod, he received the Copley Medal from the Royal Society on London in 1753. Franklin also conducted other experiments in meteorology including noting that storms do not always follow the prevailing winds and that evaporation helps in the cooling process.

When Ben Franklin was 15-years-old he began writing for the first newspaper in Boston, the New England Currant, started by his brother. Ben Franklin used a pen name since he knew his brother would never publish his younger brother's letters. Franklin's most famous printing endeavors would come later with his publication of "Poor Richard's Almanac" in 1733. Benjamin Franklin was born on January 17, 1706 and died on April 17, 1790.

Rumor Has It …

Rumor has it that along with inventing the Franklin pot belly stove, Benjamin Franklin also invented the pot belly pig as well. With a combination of genetic engineering and mechanical engineering, Franklin developed a pig that could eat its own weight in bacon just for the sheer joy of inventing a cannibalistic vertebrate.

Another rumor has it that Ben Franklin, not be silenced, this do-gooder used to help little old ladies across the street and then host them for tea and crumpets. In a totally unreliable and conflicting account, it is dubiously documented that Franklin would help little old ladies across the street, but then kick them into the mud and run like a little schoolgirl screaming "You're it! You're it!"