The Age of Invention | Page 4

time to take its place in the Series.
H. T.
COLLEGE OF THE CITY OF NEW YORK, May 10, 1921.
CONTENTS
I. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND HIS TIMES
II. ELI WHITNEY AND THE COTTON GIN
III. STEAM IN CAPTIVITY
IV. SPINDLE, LOOM, AND NEEDLE IN NEW ENGLAND
V. THE AGRICULTURAL REVOLUTION
VI. AGENTS OF COMMUNICATION
VII. THE STORY OF RUBBER
VIII. PIONEERS OF THE MACHINE SHOP
IX. THE FATHERS OF ELECTRICITY
X. THE CONQUEST OF THE AIR
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

THE AGE OF INVENTION

CHAPTER I
. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN AND HIS TIMES
On Milk Street, in Boston, opposite the Old South Church, lived Josiah
Franklin, a maker of soap and candles. He had come to Boston with his
wife about the year 1682 from the parish of Ecton, Northamptonshire,
England, where his family had lived on a small freehold for about three
hundred years. His English wife had died, leaving him seven children,
and he had married a colonial girl, Abiah Folger, whose father, Peter
Folger, was a man of some note in early Massachusetts.
Josiah Franklin was fifty-one and his wife Abiah thirty-nine, when the
first illustrious American inventor was born in their house on Milk
Street, January 17, 1706. He was their eighth child and Josiah's tenth
son and was baptized Benjamin. What little we know of Benjamin's
childhood is contained in his "Autobiography", which the world has
accepted as one of its best books and which was the first American
book to be so accepted. In the crowded household, where thirteen
children grew to manhood and womanhood, there were no luxuries.
Benjamin's period of formal schooling was less than two years, though
he could never remember the time when he could not read, and at the
age of ten he was put to work in his father's shop.
Benjamin was restless and unhappy in the shop. He appeared to have
no aptitude at all for the business of soap making. His parents debated
whether they might not educate him for the ministry, and his father
took him into various shops in Boston, where he might see artisans at
work, in the hope that he would be attracted to some trade. But
Benjamin saw nothing there that he wished to engage in. He was
inclined to follow the sea, as one of his older brothers had done.
His fondness for books finally determined his career. His older brother
James was a printer, and in those days a printer was a literary man as

well as a mechanic. The editor of a newspaper was always a printer and
often composed his articles as he set them in type; so "composing"
came to mean typesetting, and one who sets type is a compositor. Now
James needed an apprentice. It happened then that young Benjamin, at
the age of thirteen, was bound over by law to serve his brother.
James Franklin printed the "New England Courant", the fourth
newspaper to be established in the colonies. Benjamin soon began to
write articles for this newspaper. Then when his brother was put in jail,
because he had printed matter considered libelous, and forbidden to
continue as the publisher, the newspaper appeared in Benjamin's name.
The young apprentice felt that his brother was unduly severe and, after
serving for about two years, made up his mind to run away. Secretly he
took passage on a sloop and in three days reached New York, there to
find that the one printer in the town, William Bradford, could give him
no work. Benjamin then set out for Philadelphia. By boat to Perth
Amboy, on foot to Burlington, and then by boat to Philadelphia was the
course of his journey, which consumed five days. On a Sunday
morning in October, 1723, the tired, hungry boy landed upon the
Market Street wharf, and at once set out to find food and explore
America's metropolis.
Benjamin found employment with Samuel Keimer, an eccentric printer
just beginning business, and lodgings at the house of Read, whose
daughter Deborah was later to become his wife. The intelligent young
printer soon attracted the notice of Sir William Keith, Governor of
Pennsylvania, who promised to set him up in business. First, however,
he must go to London to buy a printing outfit. On the Governor's
promise to send a letter of credit for his needs in London, Franklin set
sail; but the Governor broke his word, and Franklin was obliged to
remain in London nearly two years working at his trade. It was in
London that he printed the first of his many pamphlets, an attack on
revealed religion, called "A Dissertation on Liberty and Necessity,
Pleasure and Pain." Though he met some interesting persons, from each
of whom he extracted, according to his custom, every particle of
information possible, no future opened for him in