1 FRANKLIN THE SCIENTIST Benjamin Franklin never watched television He never listened to the radio saw a movie or played computer games He never even turned on a light switch When Benjamin Franklin lived more than two hundred years ago none of these things existed That’s because televisions lights radios and computers are all powered by electricity And in Franklin’s time no one knew very much about electricity what it was where it came from or how to use it In fact it was Benjamin Franklin’s curiosity that made him study and experiment with electricity In 1706 when Benjamin Franklin was born people used candles to provide light This was good for Benjamin’s father Josiah Franklin He was a candle and soap maker in Boston
Even though people needed candles Benja father was not a rich man He had a large family to support Benjamin his youngest son was the fifteenth of seventeen children The Franklins couldn’t afford to give Ben more than two years of school so Ben only went to school between the ages of eight and ten His teachers probably didn’t expect him to become famous It’s likely that they just hoped he’d finally understand arithmetic in which he did very poorly But Benjamin Franklin was a scientist even as a young boy He was always trying to find out why things were the way they were And he was always trying to make things better As a boy Ben experimented with all kinds of tricks to improve his swimming Once he held on to a kite while floating floating and let the kite pull him across the water He also made himself wooden paddles to see if they would make him a better better swimmer The paddles for his hands called pallettes had a place for his thumbs The paddles on his feet were sandal-like flippers Ben decided that the paddles were too heavy to help him swim Of course no one knew Ben was a scientist then They just thought he was full of curiosity It was curiosity that made Benjamin Benjamin Franklin an avid reader He wanted to know everything
about everything and he thought that the best way to do that was to read books Ben said he couldn’t remember a time when he wasn’t reading And he kept on reading even after he had to leave school and go to work Although Ben disliked the work in his father’s candle shop he stayed with it for two years Later in life he said that this work taught him how to handle tools
