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
In those days children started working at an early age They learned a profession by working for someone whose trade they wanted to master Because Ben was so fond of books and reading reading it was decided that he would learn to be a printer He would be an apprentice a kind of student-worker for his older brother James Ben Franklin worked hard in Boston learning how to operate the printing presses and how to sell the results
Ben was a hard worker and he learned fast He used his lunch time to read and teach himself as much as possible He taught himself math He even experimented on improving his writing By the time he was seventeen Ben Franklin felt he’d learned quite a bit about printing He wasn’t getting along with his brother as his boss so he left Boston and made his way to Philadelphia He had barely any money but he knew his trade
