The Society for Useful Knowledge (38 page)

Benjamin Franklin wearing the uniform of the Union Fire Company, which he founded in Philadelphia in 1736. The pursuit of knowledge was, for Franklin, both social and socially useful. A debate within his secret club, the Junto, about the danger of fire in Philadelphia's narrow lanes led to the formation of volunteer fire companies across the city and later to the creation of America's first fire insurance scheme, with Franklin at its head.
PRIVATE COLLECTION/PETER NEWARK AMERICAN PICTURES/THE BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY

Franklin published this cartoon in 1754—with a snake representing the American colonies, severed into their constituent parts—to accompany an editorial in his
Pennsylvania Gazette
on the importance of unity. Here was an early recognition that the only way forward for the colonies lay in some degree of coordinated legislation and executive administration.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

Original Benjamin Franklin stove design. In Franklin's world, useful knowledge was a collective pursuit. Even his most famous contributions to science and technology, including the lightning rod, were the products of teamwork and the free exchange of information, ideas, and observations. The more efficient Franklin stove first took shape after a debate within the Junto over how best to combat the persistent problem of smoky chimneys and to reduce the consumption of increasingly scarce firewood.
PRIVATE COLLECTION/THE BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY

The Leyden jar, capable of storing electricity for later discharge, was crucial to experimentation in the mid-eighteenth century. It takes its name from the Dutch city where one of its co-inventors, Pieter van Musschenbroek, lived and worked. Franklin and his fellow Philadelphia electricians later linked a series of similar devices into a “battery,” the first of its kind.
ALBUM/ART RESOURCE, NY

Furankurin to kaminari no zu
: A Japanese woodcut, ca. 1868–1875. Franklin's experiments, both his famous electric kite and an earlier version using a soldier's sentry box to attract lightning and capture some of its power, were performed across the scientific world, from England, France, and the Netherlands to Russia and as far away as Japan.
BELLA C. LANDAUER COLLECTION AT THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS

A detail view of a Rittenhouse orrery. The orrery, or mechanized planetarium, built by David Rittenhouse enthralled the European virtuosi and assured his fellow Americans that they were capable of attaining great heights in science and engineering. “The amazing mechanical representation of the solar system which you conceived and executed, has never been surpassed by any but the world of which it is a copy,” wrote Thomas Jefferson in a letter to the inventor. Like his comrades, Jefferson saw the Rittenhouse orrery as a product of natural, American genius, untouched and untroubled by traditional learning.
COURTESY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA ART COLLECTION, PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA

A drawing of the transit of Venus of 1761, by Nicholas Ypey. The transit of the planet Venus across the face of the sun gave eighteenth-century astronomers and mathematicians an opportunity to calculate the absolute size of the visible universe. A pair of transits, in 1761 and 1769, captured the imagination of both the European and American publics and served as a showcase for colonial scientific achievement.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS/PHOTO RESEARCHERS

David Rittenhouse by Charles Willson Peale, 1796. David Rittenhouse, an instrument maker and largely self-taught astronomer, was instrumental in the early work of the American Philosophical Society, in particular its work on the transit of Venus in 1769. Rittenhouse, who served in the revolutionary government in Pennsylvania, succeeded Franklin as president of the Philosophical Society.
BEQUEST OF STANLEY P. SAX, NATIONAL PORTRAIT GALLERY, SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION/ART RESOURCE, NY

Benjamin Rush by Thomas Sully, 1812. Benjamin Rush, the revolutionary physician and educator, was one of many scientifically inclined signatories to the Declaration of Independence. A protégé of Franklin, he was a tireless campaigner against the use of Greek and Latin in American classrooms.
PRIVATE COLLECTION/PETER NEWARK AMERICAN PICTURES/THE BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY

Drawing of Sir Richard Arkwright's spinning machine, patented in 1769, ca. 1830 by Joseph Wilson Lowry. The revolutionary textile technology of Richard Arkwright was a closely guarded secret in Great Britain, which then led the world in the production of finished cloth. His machines were the object of early American efforts at industrial espionage.
PRIVATE COLLECTION/KEN WELSH/THE BRIDGEMAN ART LIBRARY