Today is the day! Ben Franklin turns 300. All citizens of the United States, fans of public libraries, wearers of bifocals, users of electricity, volunteer firefighters, and lovers of the Glass Armonica should celebrate.

I persuaded Fermilab's daily newsletter to run a 200-word item and volunteered to write it.In other news, Stardust made it ( Read more... )

Here are some cool links concerning Ben Franklin. The birthday falls next Tuesday.

The Franklin Tercentenary homepage is at http://www.benfranklin300.org.

Robert A. Morse has instructions on duplicating Franklin's experiments, and making equipment to do so out of modern materials-- Leyden Jars made from film canisters, aluminum foil, and paper ( Read more... )

Fandom's postman Harry Andruschak points out a list of the stamps that will be issued by the U.S. Postal Service in 2006 ( Read more... )

You may recall my entry about Ben Franklin's book Experiments and Observations on Electricity. Just checked the reliable abebooks. The book is remarkably scarce. My choices are:

1. The Octavo Press CD-ROM facsimile, about $25 ( Read more... )

I've just conceived a desire to look at Benjamin Franklin's Experiments and Observations on Electricity, which you'd think would be on the Web someplace, being in the public domain and all. But I can't find a copy.

(Ben's tercentenary is coming up, which reminds me that I've never read his Autobiography, and I really should before 17 January 2006 ( Read more... )