Franklin's Inventions
Franklin invented this metal rod to protect buildings from being struck and damaged by storms.
What is the lightning rod?
Franklin's portrait appears on this U.S. bill, the largest denomination in common circulation.
What is the $100 bill?
Franklin helped found this Ivy League university, located in Philadelphia.
What is the University of Pennsylvania?
Franklin famously flew this object, with a key attached, during a 1752 thunderstorm.
What is a kite?
Franklin was born in 1706 in this New England city.
What is Boston?
This device combines two lens powers into one pair of glasses, for near and far vision.
What are bifocals?
At 70 years old, Franklin was the oldest person to sign this 1776 document.
What is the Declaration of Independence?
Franklin helped establish this type of institution — the first in the American colonies — to treat sick patients for free.
What is a (public) hospital?
Franklin's kite experiment helped demonstrate that this natural phenomenon was actually a form of electricity.
What is lightning?
Franklin moved as a young man to this Pennsylvania city, where he spent most of his life.
What is Philadelphia?
This cast-iron heating device, still named after Franklin, produced more heat with less wood than an open fireplace.
What is the Franklin stove?
Franklin served as the first U.S. minister (ambassador) to this European country, securing crucial wartime support.
What is France?
Franklin is honored today in a hall of fame for this water-based activity, thanks to skills he developed and even wrote about as a young man.
What is swimming?
While serving in this postal role, Franklin charted and helped popularize knowledge of the Gulf Stream.
What is Deputy Postmaster General?
Franklin helped start this type of civic organization, one of the first of its kind in America, where people could borrow books.
What is a library?
Franklin invented this musical instrument made of spinning glass bowls, played by touching the rims.
What is the glass harmonica?
Franklin is the only Founder to have signed all four of these key documents: the Declaration, the Treaty of Alliance with France, the Treaty of Paris, and this 1787 document.
What is the (U.S.) Constitution?
Franklin jokingly suggested in a satirical essay that people rise earlier to save candles — an idea now linked to this modern seasonal clock change.
What is daylight saving time?
In 1756, Franklin was elected a member of this prestigious British scientific institution.
What is the Royal Society?
Franklin worked much of his early career in this trade, setting type and running a printing press.
What is printing?
Franklin invented a flexible version of this medical device to help relieve his brother's bladder stones.
What is a (urinary) catheter?
Franklin half-jokingly proposed this native bird, over the bald eagle, as a more respectable national symbol.
What is the turkey?
Franklin started the first company of this kind in the colonies, which protected homeowners against losses from a common household disaster.
What is a fire insurance company?
Franklin's electrical experiments led him to coin these two terms still used to describe types of electric charge.
What are positive and negative (charge)?
Franklin died in this year, at age 84, and his funeral drew an estimated 20,000 mourners.
What is 1790?