Benjamin Franklin

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) was born in Boston, apprenticed to his brother as a printer, and ran away to Philadelphia at seventeen, where he built a printing business, founded a library, a fire company, a hospital and the institution that became the University of Pennsylvania, and published Poor Richard’s Almanack. His experiments with electricity made him famous in Europe. He represented the colonies in London, signed the Declaration of Independence, negotiated the French alliance and the peace of 1783, and sat in the Constitutional Convention.