Jeffrey’s Reviews > Benjamin Franklin: An American Life > Status Update

In colonial America, it was sinful to look idol, in France it was vulgar to look busy

Gettin to be Revolution time!

BF invented the glass armonica - a series of glass cylinders played with a wet finger like the sounds made on a wine glass. It was all the rage and Marie Antoinette took lessons for the instrument and Mozart and Beethoven both wrote pieces for it!!

1750s - London 750,000, philadelphia 20,000!
(Bejing 900.000)

Back in England now a celebrity

Ch 6 - Inventor , details several experiments and gave more background of the development of the lightning rod and the kite experiment

Has made enough to be a self made gentleman, is post master general in philadelphia , has his print shop , can produce books, a means of distribution - quite the vertical integration.
Master of practicality

Franklin’s brother on the wrong side of small pox immunization - BF was pro vaccine - in the 1700s!