Ben Franklin

A list of Benjamin Franklin's inventions reveals a man of many talents and interests. It was the scientist in Ben that brought out the inventor. His natural curiosity about things and the way they work made him try to find ways to make them work better.

Ben had poor vision and needed glasses to read. He got tired of constantly taking them off and putting them back on, so he decided to figure out a way to make his glasses let him see both near and far. He had two pairs of spectacles cut in half and put half of each lens in a single frame. Today, we call them bifocals.

Even though Ben is not famous for his study of bioscience, he was interested in how the human body works and looked for ways to help it work better. For example, Ben's older brother John suffered from kidney stones and Ben wanted to help him feel better. Ben developed a flexible urinary catheter that appears to have been the first one produced in America.

During Ben's lifetime, he made eight voyages across the Atlantic Ocean. These long journeys gave him a lot of time to learn about ships and how they worked. As early as 1784, Franklin suggested following the Chinese model of dividing ships' holds into watertight compartments so that if a leak occurred in one compartment, the water would not spread throughout the hold and sink the ship.

Everyone knows the story of Ben's famous kite flight. Although he made important discoveries and advancements, Ben did not "invent" electricity. He did, however, invent the lightning rod which protected buildings and ships from lightning damage.

In colonial America, most people warmed their homes by building a fire in a fireplace even though it was kind of dangerous and used a lot of wood. Ben figured that there had to be a better way. His invention of an iron furnace stove allowed people to warm their homes less dangerously