Franklin, Benjamin

US diplomat, inventor, physicist, politician, and printer

1718 - Becomes printer's apprentice to James, his older brother. 

1724 - 1726 - Lives and works as a printer in London. Returns to Philadelphia to clerk a store.

1727 - Founds the Junto group. 

1728 - Established printing business in Philadelphia

1729 - Purchases the Pennsylvania gazette newspaper. 

1730 - Benjamin marries Deborah Read. 

1731 - Main founder of Library Co. of Philadelphia (1st subscription library in America)

1732-1757 - Published "Poor Richard's Almanack" (under pseudonym Richard Saunders)

1736 - 1737- founds Union Fire Company and is appointed postmaster of Philadelphia. 

1740 - Inventor and eponym of Franklin stove

1754 - Pennsylvania delegate to Albany Congress, proposed Plan of Union

1769-1790 - Founder and 1st president of American Philosophical Society

- Developed fluid model of electric current, consisting of motion of microscopic charged particles

- Proposed experiment demonstrating lightning to be a form of electricity

- Invented lightning rod

1773 - Wrote satiric pamphlet "Rules by Which a Great Empire May be Reduced to a Small One"

1775 - Lives in london and works for repeal of stamp act.

1785 - Returns to America.

1787 - Signs the constitution, becomes a delegate to the constitutional convention

1790 ( April 17) - dies in Philadelphia