At the start of the twentieth century, science reemerged into the public sphere. It was a surprising development. Science had been becoming more specialized, more abstract and mathematized—and inaccessible to outsiders. But the use of chemical gases in World War I gave scientists a public, if disturbing, role. World War II did so again with the famous race to develop nuclear weapons. At that point, the center of scientific learning was shifting westward. Many brilliant scientists (including Einstein) fled from National Socialism and to the United States. The war and the infusion of talent were essential to the U.S. government’s new sponsorship of scientific research. In 1939, physicists Edward Teller and Leo Szilard managed to convince Einstein to sign a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt advocating the development of an atomic bomb. Roosevelt complied by creating several collaborative and heavily funded projects. Scientists involved in the Manhattan Project developed much of the foundation of the atom bomb; they built and tested one in New Mexico on July 16, 1945.46
And so, the idea of the scientist as political conscience was reborn. Einstein had played this role when he wrote to Roosevelt. His inspirer, Leo Szilard, now worried over the unguarded use of nuclear weapons and pleaded for a slow, deliberate consideration of the bomb’s use. Szilard organized reports and petitions and gathered signatures—a sign that other scientists also worried about their new status as weapon makers. In their actions, the physicists made clear that they knew they were stepping outside their usual domain. It was a contrast to Franklin’s easy migration, even during war, between science and politics. Moreover, the scale of destruction that the twentieth-century scientists could now achieve was devastatingly greater than anything the American Founder might have imagined.47
This new, big science transformed hydrography into modern oceanography. The world wars and the ensuing Cold War gave the United States incentive to study oceans. Submarine vessels presented both military and scientific challenges—how could they be kept on course? How might their approach be detected? Sonar made it possible to track submarine traffic. But variations in sea-water’s temperature, depth, and velocity affect sonar. Oceanographers at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute, on Cape Cod, developed a bathythermograph. This instrument would measure water temperature variation as depth increased—information that was essential to the accurate operation and reading of sonar—and postwar oceanographers would use this instrument to investigate ocean currents, including the Gulf Stream.48
Over the second half of the twentieth century, the amount of material available for physical oceanography exploded. Current meters and neutrally buoyant floats tracked major currents and eddies; electronic sensors and satellites gathered millions of pieces of data about the sea—temperature at every level, surface and subsurface motion, fine shades of salinity, and so on. Computers eventually allowed the quick processing of all this information. The Gulf Stream is now understood as part of a general pattern of oceanic circulation that has tremendous implications for climate. And the Atlantic is now the world’s most studied ocean. This is not necessarily because it is the most interesting ocean; rather, it has become one of the most protected bodies of water in the world because of U.S. security concerns.49
By the middle of the twentieth century, science had a public profile it had not enjoyed since the eighteenth century. The idea that scientists such as Einstein and Szilard could make wise interventions into public life survived the war. In 1964, Americans ranked three occupations as most prestigious: Supreme Court justices, physicians, and nuclear physicists, in that order. As the United States became the world’s only superpower and the center of the most lavishly funded science—a complete historical turnaround—scholars began to examine the history of American science. In 1941 (just before the United States would enter World War II), a scholarly edition of Franklin’s Experiments and Observations on Electricity appeared for the first time in the United States.50
Franklin might finally have felt at home. He would not have fully understood the actual science of the mid-twentieth century, but he might have recognized the popular appreciation of it. He might have felt kinship with the scientist who, above all others, became the era’s popular icon: Einstein. The iconography of fame (now displayed on coffee mugs rather than snuffboxes) showed an odd affinity between the two men, both presumed geniuses. Their work in the sciences was nothing alike—Einstein questioned everything Franklin had assumed. And Einstein was the more important figure in science, precisely because he challenged rather than accepted Newton. But the eras in which Franklin and Einstein lived and the uses to which their images were put had some similar contours.51
Perhaps the Seven Years’ War, American Revolution, debates over slavery, and developments in Newtonian science were not equivalent to the two world wars, the Holocaust, quantum mechanics, and the theory of relativity. Maybe the eighteenth-century developments were not quite so earth-shattering, in the long term. But at the time, they shocked people in a way not seen again until the twentieth century. The context of global upheaval mattered—it definitely gave an edge to discussions of science. Thus, it is all the more striking that the nineteenth century lacked any global cataclysms, despite the localized carnages of the American Civil War and of the Crimean War. Had his theory of evolution come onto the scene during a period of massive global conflict, might Darwin have faced a different reception?
In both the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, people responded to the upheavals in a similar way. They created a hero, a genius in science who could decode the cosmos. In the popular imagination, both men acquired a slightly rumpled quality. The “bohemian” Einstein matched the informally wigless Franklin. Both were transformed into kindly if eccentric uncles, improbably twinkly of eye. What accounted for the desire to domesticate each great intellect? The words genius and genial come from the same root but are rarely applied to the same person. Perhaps the latter word can defuse the impact of the former. That may be why their contemporaries rendered Franklin and Einstein as geniuses—but charming ones.
None of this hero worship effectively represented either Franklin’s or Einstein’s science—or science at all, which involves much more than individual personalities. Apart from their similar places in popular culture, Franklin and Einstein did not have much in common. And it is a bit sad that each genius was eventually assigned a symbol whose scientific meaning few people truly understood. Franklin is endlessly flying his kite in some fictitious rainstorm; Einstein will forever be writing E = mc2 on some fictitious blackboard. Ask anyone what they know about either “scientist,” and you’ll probably get some kind of statement about the kite or the equation; ask the follow-up question, “what does it mean,” and you’re unlikely to get a response that explains a Newtonian view of particulate matter and friction or a relation between energy and mass.
We could bring Franklin completely up to date by introducing him to string theory and complexity theory. Had he been shocked at the demolition of the Newtonian worldview, he could then reel from new assaults on Einstein’s view of the cosmos. (And he could see how discovery of the DNA double helix and human genome have reignited arguments over race and racism.) But perhaps the point is already clear: Franklin does not belong to our era. The revolutions in thought and society between his death and the present day are vast; his response to those changes is something we can never know.
But really, Franklin stood not for a specific theory but for a kind of curiosity—a way of being in the world. He was endlessly fascinated by nature and wanted others to be so, as well. Had he been kept alive in his barrel of Madeira and then revived to witness our era, it is likely that he would have been most surprised not by any particular invention or theory but by our lack of curiosity. The gap between experts in science and the general public continues to widen. In Franklin’s own country, science education has declined dramatically, along with the reading public’s grasp of scientific terms and theories.52
What would Franklin have made, for instance, of the debat
es over climate change? Earth scientists, including oceanographers, have been arguing for the past few decades that there is strong evidence that the globe’s climate is changing. They point to extreme weather patterns, now more common than they were a century ago. Oceanographers analyze data that indicate that the warm waters of the Gulf Stream are now not so apparent because the rest of the ocean’s surface is heating up. If that warming trend continues, oceanographers claim, the ocean’s system of circulation will not transfer heat from equator to poles as effectively. The warming trend in ocean and climate would become even worse. But even as scientists have presented data to support these claims, Americans, including political leaders, have tended to ignore them.53
Franklin certainly would have been interested in the subject. Climate was, after all, a topic he had considered throughout his life, starting with his observations at sea in 1726 and continuing through his almanacs and subsequent work in the sciences. And his first scientific work had been on the circulation of heat. Above all, he was a pioneer observer of the Gulf Stream, which is now regarded as a key indicator of climate change. Surely, Franklin would have been dismayed at current predictions that the Gulf Stream may cease to exist as the ocean warms up around it? Surely, he would have been amazed, if not appalled, at projections that the warming of polar zones will open up the Northwest Passage he had long sought?
But perhaps the aspect of the debate that would most alarm Franklin would be the divide between scientists and nonscientists. Why do the latter ignore the former? He had never imagined a division of this sort. And, indeed, why should it exist?
It does not exist in another area, one that might have delighted Franklin. At several points in his life, he had encouraged other Americans to participate in astronomical observations. They still can. Big science notwithstanding, there has been a renaissance of backyard astronomy. Mere aficionados with telescopes and access to the Internet have been collaborating with astronomers to generate a battery of useful observations of the heavens, far more than the specially trained astronomers could ever collect themselves. It is not necessarily the gadgetry—telescopes and laptops—that would delight Poor Richard. Instead, it is the assumption that any person with a basic education can participate in science and examine the natural world. Franklin had many faults; he had tried to cultivate many virtues. But his best qualities were perhaps his endless curiosity about the natural world and his determination that others learn to share it.54
WHEN he was a young printer, Franklin had experimented with nature prints, in which he imprinted the leaves of plants onto paper. As a youth in London, he may have learned about the technique of stereotyping. Printers who produced stereotypes used a soft material, usually papier-mâché, to make an impression of an object, perhaps something from nature such as a leaf, flower, or feather. When the impression dried, printers could use it to mold lead; in this way, they created very specialized pieces of type, or characters, as they called them. Around 1731, Franklin’s Library Company colleague, Joseph Breintnall, had started to produce nature prints—some exquisite examples survive at the Library Company today. Then Franklin tried his hand. He used one nature print, of a leaf of the “Rattle-Snake” plant, in Poor Richard for 1737 ; he touted the herb’s power against pleurisy. At least as early as 1737, he began to use nature prints on paper currency. When Franklin produced bills for New Jersey, Delaware, and Pennsylvania, he used plants—willow or blackberry leaves, fern pinnules—to print designs on their reverse sides.55
Nature counterfeited (front). Franklin and Hall’s nature print on Philadelphia currency, 1764. PRIVATE COLLECTION.
It was a brilliant way to prevent counterfeiting. The print on each bill was unique. Franklin could pluck a leaf or fern, use it to produce a carefully guarded impression, and then discard it. The bills he printed would bear images impossible to reproduce. People would gain greater confidence in the paper money, which would foster its broad circulation, one of Franklin’s cherished goals. Many of the surviving bills he printed have creases in them. His contemporaries had clearly used them and perhaps folded them to put away for safekeeping. Inspired by Franklin’s example, printers who produced currency for the United Colonies and the later United States also used nature prints. Nature itself would protect the republic’s credit and finances.
Nature counterfeited (back). Franklin and Hall’s nature print on Philadelphia currency, 1764. PRIVATE COLLECTION.
“To Counterfeit is DEATH,” a common phrase on early American currency warned. The admonition had many meanings when it appeared above a nature print. A nature print was unique; only God could create the living things that were unique. But was a nature printer thereby counterfeiting the works of the divine Craftsman? Or, was the printer instead reverently observing his power? Certainly, Franklin was aware of the power of his craft. He was careful not to reveal his technique of nature printing to anyone he thought untrustworthy. He must have told his business partner, David Hall. Hall continued to use nature prints on currency into the 1760s. And Franklin evidently explained the process to Cadwallader Colden, but loyally, Colden kept his friend’s secret. In 1743, Colden wrote William Strahan that he could not describe how Franklin produced his nature prints: “As printing is this mans trade and he makes a Benefite of it I do not think my self at liberty to communicate it.” We still do not know how Franklin created his nature prints. Did he use plaster, or papier-mâché, or damp earth? How did he manipulate any of these sticky substances into a useful stereotype? The trade secret died with its inventor, the Philadelphia master printer.56
Mastery and mystery. As with the nature prints, so with all of Franklin’s science. Throughout his life, Franklin sought to understand and control natural phenomena. But he never lost his faith that nature was, in the end, wonderful, a vast scene of marvels. To counterfeit Creation—who but Benjamin Franklin, that unique eighteenth-century character, the first scientific American, could have made the act one of both the highest arrogance and of the greatest reverence?
NOTES
For further information on the events of Franklin’s life, see the chronologies in each volume of Leonard W. Labaree et al., eds., The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, 37 vols. to date (New Haven, 1959–), and in The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, ed. Leonard W. Labaree et al., 2nd ed. (New Haven, 2003), 303–322. Carl Van Doren’s Benjamin Franklin (New York, 1938), is still the best comprehensive biography.
To emphasize the sociable and collaborative nature of eighteenth-century science, I have not used the published versions of Benjamin Franklin’s Experiments and Observations on Electricity; instead, I cite the versions of the essays as they originally appeared, as letters. The Papers of Benjamin Franklin publishes the letters but also specifies which edition of Franklin’s Experiments and Observations they appeared in and what changes were made to them when they were published.
Abbreviations
The following abbreviations are used throughout the notes. Each work listed here is cited in full at first appearance in the Notes section.
People
BF: Benjamin Franklin
CC: Cadwallader Colden
DF: Deborah Franklin
JB: Jacques Barbeu-Dubourg
JI: Jan Ingenhousz
JL: Jean-Baptiste Le Roy
JP: Joseph Priestley
MS: Mary “Polly” Stevenson (later Mary Hewson)
PC: Peter Collinson
WF: William Franklin
WS: William Strahan
Books and Periodicals
Autobiography: Leonard W. Labaree et al., eds. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. 2nd ed. (New Haven, 2003).
AWM: American Weekly Mercury
BFP: Charles Coleman Sellers, Benjamin Franklin in Portraiture (New Haven, 1962).
BFS: I. Bernard Cohen, Benjamin Franklin’s Science (Cambridge, Mass., 1990).
CHS: The Cambridge History of Science, vol. 4, Eighteenth-Century Science, ed. Roy Porter (Cambridge, 2003).
F&N: I. Bernard
Cohen, Franklin and Newton: An Inquiry into Speculative Newtonian Experimental Science and Franklin’s Work in Electricity as an Example Thereof (Philadelphia, 1956).
JA: L. H. Butterfield et al., eds., Diary and Autobiography of John Adams, 4 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1961).
NEC: New-England Courant
NEQ: New England Quarterly
PBF: Leonard W. Labaree et al., eds., The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, 37 vols. to date (New Haven, 1959–).
PG: Pennsylvania Gazette
PR: Poor Richard
PRI: Poor Richard Improved
SFF: I. Bernard Cohen, Science and the Founding Fathers: Science in the Political Thought of Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, and James Madison (New York, 1995).
WBF: Albert Henry Smyth, ed., The Writings of Benjamin Franklin, 10 vols. (New York, 1905–1907).
WMQ: William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd ser.
Archives
APS: American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia
PO: Post Office Archives, London
RS: Royal Society, London
TNA: The National Archives, London
Chapter 1
1 BF to Sarah Bache, June 3, 1779, Leonard W. Labaree et al., eds., The Papers of Benjamin Franklin, 37 vols. to date (New Haven, 1959–), 29:613; Charles Coleman Sellers, Benjamin Franklin in Portraiture (New Haven, 1962), ill. 5–44; PBF, 36:fig. facing p. 11 and 11n (on Jacques Bianchi’s silk portrait).
2 Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. (Oxford, 1989), s.v., “genius”; Penelope Murray, “Introduction,” in Genius: The History of an Idea, ed. Penelope Murray (New York, 1989), 1–8; L. P. Smith, Words and Idioms: Studies in the English Language (London, 1925), 108–112; Simon Schaffer, “Genius in Romantic Natural Philosophy,” in Romanticism and the Sciences, ed. Andrew Cunningham and Nicholas Jardine (New York, 1990), 82–98; “B. B.” [BF], A Modest Enquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper-Currency (1729), PBF, 1:148; Penuel Bowen to BF, Nov. 6, 1771, PBF, 18:244.
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