Top Ten Inventions
10. The Flexible Urinary Catheter
Benjamin Franklin's modernization of the catheter was not his most notable invention, but it certainly came as a blessing to those suffering from kidney stones in Franklin's time. A catheter is a, nowadays, flexible tube inserted into the patient's body to extract fluids; however, at the time, the catheter was no more than a rigid metal tube that made the process extremely uncomfortable. To ease the pain on his brother John, who suffered from a kidney stone, Franklin went to the local silversmith with his idea for a flexible catheter. He wrote to John, "It is as flexible as would be expected in a thing of the kind, and I imagine will readily comply with the turns of passage."
9. Swimming Fins
In his youth, Benjamin Franklin was an avid swimmer. As an eleven year old in Boston, Franklin created his first invention, a pair of elliptical, lily-pad shaped planks with holes through the centers. He held the two planks and used them to give himself an extra thrust underwater. Though they did increase his speed, Franklin stopped using them after they began to tire his wrists. Later, he tried strapping wooden sandals to his feet, but gave up on those as well, finding them awkward to wear and difficult to swim with.
8. The Odometer
While developing a well-functioning postal system in the colonies, Franklin conceived the odometer to measure distances between the roads of the colonies. It was not the world's first odometer, since odometers date back to as far as Ancient Rome, nor was it the last, but it was revolutionized and made to work; The odometer was helpful in recreating the colonial postal system and was used to measure the distance a wheeled vehicle traveled.
7. The Glass Armonica
Sets of water-tunes wine glasses on which melodies could be played were popularized in the 1700s. While attending a concert at Cambridge University, Franklin watched Edmund Delaval play the wine glasses; he thought that there could be an easier way, for playing the glasses by hand was time consuming and fatigued the wrists. After two years of experimentation and thinking up other ways to create music from glass, Franklin unleashed his glass armonica. The armonica was made of different sized glass bowls arranged on a rotating shaft. To play, the shaft was spun with a foot pedal, and wet fingers ran over the rotating bowls.
6. Mapping the Gulf Stream
Whilst making his eight voyages across the Atlantic Ocean from the colonies to Europe and back, Franklin wondered why the trip eastward was faster than the trips back to America. Curiosity and interest drove him to map the Gulf Stream. The Gulf Stream is an ocean current that flows north from the Gulf of Mexico through the Atlantic. Franklin measured wind speeds, current depth, and temperature, and water speed. His mapping would help speed shipments, mail deliveries, and travel across the Atlantic ocean.
5. The Long Arm
Franklin originally fashioned his reaching device, or "Long Arm", to reach books from their high places on shelves. Though he was rather tall (5 feet, 11 inches, to be exact) by his late-adulthood, his homes were filled with numerous floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. To reach the high shelves, Franklin created a device made of a piece of wood with two long "fingers" fastened to the end; by pulling on a cord, the fingers were brought together to grip an object. To this day, modernized versions of Franklin's reaching device still exist.
4. The Lightning Rod
After gaining a basic understanding of electricity and in the midst of proving that lightning was a form of electricity, Franklin set out to protect homes from nature's forces. The lighting rod was a stick of conductive metal that would receive the electrical charge from lighting and transfer it to the ground rather than setting the house on fire. It was attached to the top of a building and connected the rod to the ground through a wire.
3. Bifocal Glasses
Upon reaching old age, Franklin was startled to realize that he had become both near- and far-sighted. It became frustrating to constantly switch glasses depending on what situation he was in, so as a solution, Franklin cut the lenses in half and fused them together in one frame. By looking up, Franklin could see long distances; he could read things up close by peering down. Franklin's original bifocal glasses remained virtually unchanged until 2006, when a team of Arizona researchers debuted eyeglasses with lenses that could change from near- to far-sighted lenses by pushing a button.
2. The Franklin Stove
In Pennsylvania, fires were lit to ward off harsh winters with oak, hickory, and maple logs. In a few years, the abundance of trees began to grow thin; Franklin decided to battle the crisis by inventing a better, more efficient way to heat homes. Fireplaces, he thought, were the exact opposite of what he needed, since most of the heat is lost through the chimney. He resolved the issue by enclosing a fire in a small, cast-iron box positioned in the center of a room. The stove was extremely innovative, since it radiated heat from all four sides, allowed the owner to control how much wood burned, and did nor carry the risk of stray sparks causing fires.
1. Electricity
Benjamin Franklin did not, of course, create electricity. This can be proven by the fact that he was the one to discover that electricity is a form of energy, and energy can never be created or destroyed, only transferred from one source to another. It was previously thought that electricity was made of two opposing forces, but after much experimentation and electrocution, Franklin was able to justify that electricity was composed of a common element, one which he called "electric fire". Franklin's work also coined electrical terms which are still used today, such as battery, charge, condenser, conductor, plus, minus, and armature.
Benjamin Franklin's modernization of the catheter was not his most notable invention, but it certainly came as a blessing to those suffering from kidney stones in Franklin's time. A catheter is a, nowadays, flexible tube inserted into the patient's body to extract fluids; however, at the time, the catheter was no more than a rigid metal tube that made the process extremely uncomfortable. To ease the pain on his brother John, who suffered from a kidney stone, Franklin went to the local silversmith with his idea for a flexible catheter. He wrote to John, "It is as flexible as would be expected in a thing of the kind, and I imagine will readily comply with the turns of passage."
9. Swimming Fins
In his youth, Benjamin Franklin was an avid swimmer. As an eleven year old in Boston, Franklin created his first invention, a pair of elliptical, lily-pad shaped planks with holes through the centers. He held the two planks and used them to give himself an extra thrust underwater. Though they did increase his speed, Franklin stopped using them after they began to tire his wrists. Later, he tried strapping wooden sandals to his feet, but gave up on those as well, finding them awkward to wear and difficult to swim with.
8. The Odometer
While developing a well-functioning postal system in the colonies, Franklin conceived the odometer to measure distances between the roads of the colonies. It was not the world's first odometer, since odometers date back to as far as Ancient Rome, nor was it the last, but it was revolutionized and made to work; The odometer was helpful in recreating the colonial postal system and was used to measure the distance a wheeled vehicle traveled.
7. The Glass Armonica
Sets of water-tunes wine glasses on which melodies could be played were popularized in the 1700s. While attending a concert at Cambridge University, Franklin watched Edmund Delaval play the wine glasses; he thought that there could be an easier way, for playing the glasses by hand was time consuming and fatigued the wrists. After two years of experimentation and thinking up other ways to create music from glass, Franklin unleashed his glass armonica. The armonica was made of different sized glass bowls arranged on a rotating shaft. To play, the shaft was spun with a foot pedal, and wet fingers ran over the rotating bowls.
6. Mapping the Gulf Stream
Whilst making his eight voyages across the Atlantic Ocean from the colonies to Europe and back, Franklin wondered why the trip eastward was faster than the trips back to America. Curiosity and interest drove him to map the Gulf Stream. The Gulf Stream is an ocean current that flows north from the Gulf of Mexico through the Atlantic. Franklin measured wind speeds, current depth, and temperature, and water speed. His mapping would help speed shipments, mail deliveries, and travel across the Atlantic ocean.
5. The Long Arm
Franklin originally fashioned his reaching device, or "Long Arm", to reach books from their high places on shelves. Though he was rather tall (5 feet, 11 inches, to be exact) by his late-adulthood, his homes were filled with numerous floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. To reach the high shelves, Franklin created a device made of a piece of wood with two long "fingers" fastened to the end; by pulling on a cord, the fingers were brought together to grip an object. To this day, modernized versions of Franklin's reaching device still exist.
4. The Lightning Rod
After gaining a basic understanding of electricity and in the midst of proving that lightning was a form of electricity, Franklin set out to protect homes from nature's forces. The lighting rod was a stick of conductive metal that would receive the electrical charge from lighting and transfer it to the ground rather than setting the house on fire. It was attached to the top of a building and connected the rod to the ground through a wire.
3. Bifocal Glasses
Upon reaching old age, Franklin was startled to realize that he had become both near- and far-sighted. It became frustrating to constantly switch glasses depending on what situation he was in, so as a solution, Franklin cut the lenses in half and fused them together in one frame. By looking up, Franklin could see long distances; he could read things up close by peering down. Franklin's original bifocal glasses remained virtually unchanged until 2006, when a team of Arizona researchers debuted eyeglasses with lenses that could change from near- to far-sighted lenses by pushing a button.
2. The Franklin Stove
In Pennsylvania, fires were lit to ward off harsh winters with oak, hickory, and maple logs. In a few years, the abundance of trees began to grow thin; Franklin decided to battle the crisis by inventing a better, more efficient way to heat homes. Fireplaces, he thought, were the exact opposite of what he needed, since most of the heat is lost through the chimney. He resolved the issue by enclosing a fire in a small, cast-iron box positioned in the center of a room. The stove was extremely innovative, since it radiated heat from all four sides, allowed the owner to control how much wood burned, and did nor carry the risk of stray sparks causing fires.
1. Electricity
Benjamin Franklin did not, of course, create electricity. This can be proven by the fact that he was the one to discover that electricity is a form of energy, and energy can never be created or destroyed, only transferred from one source to another. It was previously thought that electricity was made of two opposing forces, but after much experimentation and electrocution, Franklin was able to justify that electricity was composed of a common element, one which he called "electric fire". Franklin's work also coined electrical terms which are still used today, such as battery, charge, condenser, conductor, plus, minus, and armature.