Benjamin Franklin was born on January 17, 1706, in Boston, Massachusetts. He was born to Josiah and Abian Franklin. Benjamin was one of seventeen children. His father made soap and candles in his shop, The Sign of Blue Ball. At the age of eight Ben was kept out of school to assist his father in the shop. Then at age twelve he quit his job with his dad and started to work with his brother James. James was a printer. .

             Ben worked as an apprentice in his brother"s shop. While Ben was working for his brother he wrote a book called, Do Good Papers, under a false name so his brother wouldn"t know he wrote it. While working for James, Ben helped his brother create a paper called, The New England Courant. A few months later James was sent to jail for printing radical ideas. While James was gone Ben ran the shop and created a new paper called The Courant. At the age of seventeen Ben quit his job and found a job with a printer in Philadelphia. Ben worked there for a couple of years and then finally left to open up his own print shop. Ben produced the paper called, The Pennsylvania Gazette. .

             The Gazette was the first paper to have cartoons, jokes, weather, and an edition with an editorial page. While working on the "Gazette" Ben got married to Deborah Read. While working in all these places Ben came up with a lot of good ideas. He eventually used these ideas to create a lot of inventions that were very useful. One invention Ben created was "The Franklin Stove." The stove was an iron furnace stove. It heated houses less dangerously than wood. The stove saved money and heated a house Berman-2 more efficiently. Interestingly enough, Ben also established the first fire company, and the first fire insurance company in order to help people live more safely. .

             As Ben got older his vision began to fail. It got so bad that Ben had to find something to help his vision. He came up with a pair of bifocals by combining two spectacles.