Franklin was born in Boston in 1706, the fifteenth child of an immigrant candle and soap maker. When he was twelve, he signed indentures to serve in his brother’s printing shop. At seventeen, he fled his brother’s mistreatment, which included beatings, and ended up in Philadelphia looking for printer’s work. At twenty-two, he established his own printing business. While still in his twenties, he began publishing The Pennsylvania Gazette, which became the most popular newspaper in America, and Poor Richard’s Almanack, which would sell more than ten thousand copies a year. At forty-two, he retired from business to “read, study, make experiments.”

The retirement didn’t last long. To Franklin, science was of a piece with public service, and his scientific reputation made him all the more desirable as a public servant. In 1757, the Pennsylvania Assembly chose him to represent its interests in London. He stayed for most of the next eighteen years, acting as an agent for several colonies. The day after his return to Philadelphia, he was elected to the Second Continental Congress. The next year, 1776, he helped draft the Declaration of Independence and accepted an appointment as commissioner to France. He lived in Paris until 1785, obtaining arms, funds, and the support of the French government for the American cause. In 1787, at the age of eighty-one, he served as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention.

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