Derek

Derek



Benjamin Franklin's Inventions

Some of the most famous people in the world was Benjamin Franklin. He was born on January 17th, 1708 in Boston, Massachusetts. His name was on three of the most important documents in United States history: the Treaty of Paris, the Declaration of Independence, and the U.S Constitution. He was an apprentice printer of a man named James, but they had an argument where Ben was writing letters to the public about the treatment for women. He also used his nickname, Silence Dogood, when writing the letters. When the citizens found that Ben was writing the letters, James became very angry and jealous and kept harassing Ben until he ran away to Philadelphia, where he became another apprentice printer and into the famous inventor we know him as. Some of his inventions were the odometer, bifocals, and the lightning rod. The odometer is an instrument on the dashboard that indicates distance traveled by a vehicle. In the 1600s, the odometer was for ships that traveled far distances. It was invented because while Ben Franklin was Postal General in 1775, he began to determine the best postal routes for delivery. One of the measures he used was distance, so he invented his own odometer, attached to his carriage, in order to determine the distances he traveled using different routes. The odometer was a great tool, past, present, and maybe future. Bifocals are glasses that have half of a concave lens and half of a convex lens put together, so people don't have to keep switching nearsighted and farsightedness if they suffer from presbyopia ( farsightedness due to ciliary muscle weakness and loss of elasticity in the crystalline lens ), myopia ( lack of foresight or discernment; obtuseness ), and hyperopia ( nearsightedness ). Ben Franklin had this issue and was annoyed that he had to keep switching glasses over and over again, so he invented the bifocals. The way he made them was he asked a glass cuter to cut two pairs of lens apart. After that, Ben just glued the bottom of one pair on top of another. If there was glasses, there wouldn't be any bifocals at all. Bifocals are a great utensil for certain people. The last invention, but not the least is the lightning rod. The lightning rod is a metal rod usually put on elevated structures, such as a building, ship, or even a tree. It is used to help structures survive lightning strikes. If lightning hits the structure, it will strike the rod and be conducted to ground, instead of passing through the structure, where it can cause a fire and electrocution. Lightning rods come in many different forms: hollow, solid, pointed, rounded, flat strips, or even bristle bush like. The main attribute common to all lightning rods is that they are all made of conductive material, such as copper or aluminum. Ben experimented with electricity. He knew the lightning rod would be great against the terrible storms and the lightning rod still exists. Benjamin Franklin was a great inventor. He was curious and loved to learn new things. Ben Franklin also invented lots of other useful things, such as the Franklin stove, swim fins, and the glass armonica. He was born to be part of a poor family to a rich man. Sadly, he died on April 17, 1790. If he wasn't on this world, some of us would be clueless about our distances, suffer from near and farsightedness, and could electrocuted later on. Benjamin Franklin was the great inventor of the odometer, bifocals, and the lightning rod.