Benjamin Franklin Timeline: 1741 to 1790
1741
- Advertises the "Franklin Stove"
- Published the first edition of "The General Magazine and Historical Chronicle," one of America's earliest magazines. It failed after six issues.
- Franklin organized and publicized a project to sponsor plant collecting trips by renowned Philadelphia botanist John Bartram.
- Attends Archibald Spencer's Boston lectures on natural philosophy (including electricity)
- Comes out with "A Proposal for Promoting Useful Knowledge" (the founding document of the prototype of the American Philosophical Society)
- Daughter Sally born and baptized at Christ Church
- The American Philosophical Society begins meeting
- Death of Josiah Franklin, Benjamin's father
1746
- Begins extensive electrical experiments
- Franklin writes "The Plain Truth," a pamphlet arguing for better military preparedness in PA. In the pamphlet is the first political cartoon published in America.
- Peter Collinson of London sends Franklin an electric tube. "For my own part, I never was before engaged in any study that so totally engrossed my attention and my time as this has lately done.
- Becomes a soldier in the PA militia after turning down a commission as a Colonel citing military inexperience.
- Franklin presents his vision for education in a pamphlet titled "Publick Academy of Philadelphia." His initiatives and vision would lead to the founding of the University of Pennsylvania.
- Letters on electricity published in London by Peter Collinson
- Conducts kite experiment
- Received Copley Medal of the royal Society of London for research in electricity. Deputy Postmaster General of N.A.
- Wrote a plan for a union of the colonies for security and defense.
17521753
- Received honorary degrees from Harvard and Yale.
- Appointed joint Deputy Postmaster General of North America.
- Proposes plan of colonial union at Albany Congress
- In England as agent for Pennsylvania Assembly, Massachusetts, Georgia, New Jersey
- Receives honorary degree of Doctor of Laws from the University of St. Andrews, Scotland
- Mapped Postal routes in the colonies. Invents glass armonica
- Examined in House of Commons in support of repeal of the Stamp Act
- Named Colonial Agent for Georgia.
- Named Colonial Agent for New Jersey.
- Elected Colonial Agent for Massachusetts.
- Tours Ireland.
1771-72
- Begins writing his Autobiography.
- Dressed down before London's Privy Council by Solicitor General Wedderburn for leaking letters in the "Hutchinson Affair."
- Deborah Read, his wife of 44 years, dies in Philadelphia
- Elected as a Pennsylvania delegate of Pennsylvania to Second Continental Congress; serves as chairman of Pennsylvania Committee of Safety
- Elected Postmaster General of the Colonies
- Presides over Constitutional Convention of PA.
- Serves on a committee of five who draft the Declaration of Independence.
- Arrives in Paris on 12/21 as one of the Commissioners of Congress to the French Court
- Meets Madame Brillon, an amour.
- Signs French Alliance
- Appointed to negotiate peace treaty with England.
- Madame Helvetius rejects Franklin's offer of marriage.
- Signed Peace Treaty
- Invented bifocals
- Elected President of Pennsylvania Executive Council
- Invents the "long arm," an instrument for taking down books from a shelf
- Signs the United States Constitution
- Writes anti-slavery treatise
- He becomes president of the Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery
- April 17, dies in Philadelphia at the age of 84. 20,000 mourners attend his funeral at Philadelphia's Christ Church Burial Ground.