7 Benjamin Franklin 7he did in France during the Revolution, he can quite
plausibly be regarded as America’s greatest diplomat.
Equally significant perhaps were Franklin’s many con-
tributions to the comfort and safety of daily life, especially
in his adopted city of Philadelphia. No civic project was
too large or too small for his interest. In addition to his
lightning rod and his Franklin stove (a wood-burning stove
that warmed American homes for more than 200 years),
he invented bifocal glasses, the odometer, and the glass
harmonica (armonica). He had ideas about everything—
from the nature of the Gulf Stream to the cause of the
common cold. He suggested the notions of matching
grants and Daylight Saving Time. Almost single-handedly
he helped to create a civic society for the inhabitants of
Philadelphia. Moreover, he helped to establish new insti-
tutions that people now take for granted: a fire company, a
library, an insurance company, an academy, and a hospital.
Probably Franklin’s most important invention was
himself. He created so many personas in his newspaper
writings and almanac and in his posthumously published
Autobiography that it is difficult to know who he really was.
Following his death in 1790, he became so identified dur-
ing the 19th century with the persona of his Auto biography
and the Poor Richard maxims of his almanac—e.g., “Early
to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and
wise”—that he acquired the image of the self-made
moralist obsessed with the getting and saving of money.
Consequently, many imaginative writers, such as Edgar
Allan Poe, Henry David Thoreau, Herman Melville, Mark
Twain, and D.H. Lawrence, attacked Franklin as a symbol
of America’s middle-class moneymaking business values.
Indeed, early in the 20th century the famous German
sociologist Max Weber found Franklin to be the perfect
exemplar of the “Protestant ethic” and the modern