from Physics Today Its the birthday of Benjamin Franklin, who was born in 1706 in Boston, Massachusetts. Franklin attended Boston Latin School for just two years then, at the age of 12, began a career as a printer. He went on to become a successful author - and, of course, a major political and public figure in America, before, during and after its fight for independence. As an amateur scientist, Franklin made several significant discoveries, including bifocal lenses and the lightning rod. His experiments with electricity were significant at the time and have at least one lasting legacy: It was Franklin who assigned, arbitrarily, a positive value to electric current; thats why in circuit diagrams, the current is shown flowing in the opposite direction to the electrons.
Posted on: Fri, 17 Jan 2014 13:03:55 +0000
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