Recently watched these two episode documentaries and a few questions come to mind. Thanks for your help.
Franklin, when ten, signed a nine year contract to work in his brother’s print shop. After an argument, he fled to Philadelphia but was concerned he would be pursued. Was this common with apprentices, or normally done?
Franklin only had two years of formal education. How common was that at the time?
Franklin formed a close friendship in Paris with Vergennes, Louis XVI’s foreign minister. This led to a large gift and later moneys even after France was left out of a treaty to end the American Revolution. How is Vergennes (Gravier) now seen in the US? In modern France?
To what extent did the American Revolution lead to the French Revolution?
Does anyone play the armonium instrument today, a sort of set of wet rotating glass rims?
Did Franklin really invent the electrical terms: positive, negative, conductor?
Was Franklin really the first to conclude lightning was electrical?
Why didn’t Franklin patent bifocals? Did patents mean much at that time?
Burns series on Franklin gives him credit for making a few important edits to Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence, such as “self-evident”. This is not mentioned in the series on Jefferson. Is this known to be true? Why not mention it?
Franklin remained cold to his son William, whom he took to England and who witnessed George 3rd’s coronation before becoming Governor of New Jersey. Though not surprising, did he ever take responsibility or cover this in his unfinished autobiography? Express regret at not seeing his wife for fifteen years?
What aphorism’s from Poor Richard’s Almanac are most famous?
John Adams seems pretty harsh. Was the election to follow Washington dirtier than recent elections?
How odd is it Jefferson and Adams died on the same day 50 years after the Declaration was signed?
Is it odd no one helped Jefferson with his debts at Monticello near the end of his life?
Jefferson had a daughter die from a breast abscess. Was this common? They can often be treated just by drainage, though the understanding of sepsis and infection was limited.
Jefferson’s arguments were later used by those both in favour and against slavery. Were his views progressive for his time?
The series implies the rumours with Sally Hemings were inconclusive. Is this still controversial? It seems very testable with modern technology.
Much is made of Jefferson’s weak speaking voice and being better at committee work than orotory. Did he improve during his lifetime?
Was the University of Virginia really the first “non-religious” school? Does it remain highly regarded? How could Jefferson not be paid for his contribution if he was so short of money?
How does the University of Pennsylvania honour its Quaker roots today?
Is the long correspondence between Jefferson and Adams from 1806 to 1826 really the most important in American letters?
Was there anything unique about Monticello? Is it true it was preserved and restored by a Jewish family grateful for Jefferson’s views on separating church and state in Virginia?
Are these short series seen as relatively unbiased? Did they omit important facts? Were its commentators well chosen?
Had anyone studied the Gulf Stream before Franklin?
How many languages could these men speak?
Which is the greater man in terms of American history?
To what extent was Jefferson responsible for the Louisiana Purchase? Where did the offer come from?
Did an American debt to France play any role in thinking regarding later world wars?
“And even should the cloud of barbarism and despotism again obscure the science and libraries of Europe, this country remains to preserve and restore light and liberty to them. In short, the flames kindled on the fourth of July, 1776, have spread over too much of the globe to be extinguished by the feeble engines of despotism; on the contrary, they will consume these engines and all who work them.” (Jefferson, letter to Adams).
What is your favourite Jefferson or Franklin quote?
The apprentice system was basic to work. Apprentices were as valuable as slaves. You just had to feed them. Nobody wanted to see either run away. Slaves were more systematically pursued because whites needed to keep the race subjugated, but the principle existed for apprentices and indentured servants.
The elites had tutors. Some entrepreneurs started schools that gave a few years of schooling. But a public school system had to wait for the 19th century.
Seriously? A thousand books argue about this. My personal opinion is not much. They had their own issues.
A bunch of us at a dinner in a private room of a restaurant played glasses. We were asked to stop. Formal recitals of the actual pieces written for it are a stunt that occasionally happens. Keeping them in tune is apparently a problem.
Ben Franklin had a quip for all occasions, but my favorite is his remark upon signing the Declaration of Independence:
"Gentlemen, we must now all hang together, or we shall most assuredly all hang separately."
I have a part-time position conducting tours of some Revolutionary War sites, and I always include that in my presentation.
Like so much about Franklin, it was both humorous and deadly serious. By boldly affixing their names to that document, those men risked everything (“Our lives, our fortunes and our sacred honor.”) Had any of them henceforth been captured by the British, they would certainly have swung at the end of a rope.
Ken Burns series, as needs must, leave out much minutiae.
I love them, though.
There’s no doubt many many books written about Franklin, Jefferson and Adams.
My understanding about Franklin’s son they had real political differences.
Franklin never quite got over the loss of his first son with Debra.
He did love his grandson that William had basically abandoned. Like father like son.
As womanizing as Franklin seemed to be I would lay a wager he had more offspring in France and England.
Adam’s daughter and her horrible breast abscess was thought to cause her general ill health. I believe it was a cancer.
I tried to research it. Alas, it wasn’t considered very important from the places I looked. (I’m not that great a researcher since I don’t haunt libraries anymore).
Whew, that’s quite the list of questions. Have you thought of really looking into auditing a class or self study in a good university library?
If I had the time I would read better biographies. But the Dope has not failed me when I have asked similar questions after many of Burns other series. I don’t really expect anyone to answer all of them, of course.
Because neither is much emphasized in Canadian history classes, I tend to confuse Jefferson and Franklin when they are (frequently) mentioned on Jeopardy!.
I know I’ve seen the armonium on display in a museum, maybe somewhere in Philadelphia. It was at least 30 years ago. I remember hearing it played, but don’t remember whether it was a performer at the exhibit, or a recording.
There’s a wikipedia article on the Jefferson–Hemings controversy.
It says: “In the majority view, the DNA evidence is consistent with Jefferson being the father of Eston Hemings, plus the historical evidence favors Jefferson’s paternity for all of Hemings’ children.”
The article mentions the Ken Burns documentary, saying that it was released in 1997, before DNA analysis was performed in 1998.
It seems that Stephen Gray and other researchers contributed to discovering that lightning was electrical. Gray wrapped a boy in silk cords and drew static from paper and chaff. I think Dufay thought that electricity comes from all sides to an electrified body. I think Dufay thought atmospheric air is from other surrounding bodies. As for Franklin, I. Bernard Cohen seemed to analyze what Franklin discovered in Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society (but it costs a $16 download fee to read it - no way man!)
The bifocals Franklin wore (and perhaps invented) were just two lenses cut in half and reassembled in frames. So, it was really just a hack any jeweler/watchmaker/optician could undertake. They weren’t mass produced until a method for fusing the two halves together was invented more than 100 years later using a process patented by John Louis Borsch Jr. in 1908.
No doubt sailors did. I expect through his sailing across the Atlantic, Franklin became interested in it. It’s said he never stopped or tired of learning.
Franklin and Jefferson spoke 6 or 7 languages. Very fluent in French.
Not sure of Adams.
Who’s the greater man? Well, that’s debatable. I guess.
Jefferson being President puts him ahead.
On 5: Mozart and Beethoven both wrote music for a glass harmonica, and I heard one used in a production of Donizetti’s Lucia di Lammermuir just a few years ago.
Jefferson was VERY responsible or the Louisiana purchase. He lobbied hard for it.
He sent ministers over to France.
It was important to his wish for westward expansion. The Mississippi River would make transporting goods easier. New Orleans was important for defense and trade.
The amt. paid was 4¢ per acre. Something like 500,000 acres.
(ETA…I think I’m wrong about the amount of land, hmm? )
Exapno is correct, but I’ll add a couple of finer points.
The OP asked about a contract, and that’s what it was. “You work for me for X years, and I’ll pay you Y dollars.” Thing was, that the apprentice only got the Y dollars when the years of apprenticeship were completed. So yes, indentured (i.e. contracted) servitude, for a period of years.
It sounds simple: “Well, if he runs away, I don’t have to pay him; he didn’t put in his time according to the contract.” True, but there was a lot of time and effort put into teaching the apprentice the craft. That knowledge and skill was more valuable the longer the apprentice worked. If the apprentice ran away after a lot of time and effort had been invested in his education, then he was indeed valuable, and would likely be pursued, regardless of the cost of the completed contract.
Franklin was not the first person to compare sparks with lightning or to hypothesize that lightning might be an electrical discharge. In fact, almost every experimenter who had previously described electric sparks had, at one time or another, mentioned an analogy to lightning. Franklin’s seminal contributions were his suggestions that tall, insulated rods could be used to determine if thunderclouds are, in fact, electrified and that tall, grounded rods would protect against lightning damage.
Franklin was, indeed, the one to establish the modern convention of “positive” and “negative” for electricity. I think he was also the first to promulgate the “one fluid” model for electricity: That is to say, that one of the sorts of charges stayed basically stationary in the wire, while the other flowed (previously, a “two fluid” model, where both flowed, was more popular). Though the two fluid model is actually accurate for plasma, and for solutions of ionic compounds in water.
I think that Franklin probably envisioned the positive charge as the one that was flowing, but he was clear in his writings that (using the experiments that he knew of, at least) it was impossible to tell which was which. It wasn’t determined that the positive charges are stationary in metals and the negative charges flow until Edwin Hall, in 1879.
Maybe, but it’s largely the idea that counts. I will give Franklin credit for bifocals.
I don’t doubt Franklin’s scientific genius. But I studied a lot of university physics including electricity. I don’t really recall Franklin’s name coming up, though many others, which is why I ask. I don’t doubt his experiments or role as a popularizer.
They brought him huge fame and acclaim at the time. When he was in Britain he was given access to all the scientific groups and paraded around the homes of the elite mostly because of his electrical experiments, far more extensive than the kite we only hear about.
The series says he did a lot of stuff with Leyden Jars, built batteries, had “electricity parties”, and several other things apart from static electricity and lightning.