Ben Franklin - 1706 - 1790, Philadelphia - pseudonym Richard Saunders - American printer and publisher, author, inventor and scientist, and diplomat. He invented a stove, still being manufactured, to give more warmth than open fireplaces; the lightning rod and bifocal eyeglasses also were his ideas. Grasping the fact that by united effort a community may have amenities which only the wealthy few can get for themselves, he helped establish institutions people now take for granted: a fire company, a library, an insurance company, an academy, and a hospital. In some cases these foundations were the first of their kind in North America. In the 1740s electricity was a novel and fashionable subject. It was introduced to Philadelphians by an electrical machine sent to the Library Company by one of Franklin's English correspondents. In the winter of 1746-47, Franklin and three of his friends began to investigate electrical phenomena. The Philadelphia weather favored them, as did the availability of talented instrument makers. Ingenious experiments and machines were devised and described in personal letters to England, which were relayed to the Royal Society of London or the Gentleman's Magazine. These papers were collected in 1751 as Experiments and Observations on Electricity and were translated into French (1752), German (1758), and Italian (1774). Franklin's fame spread rapidly. The experiment he suggested to prove the identity of lightning and electricity was first made in France before he is believed to have tried the simpler but dangerous expedient of flying a kite in a thunderstorm. He and his associates concluded early that the "Electrical Fire" was "an Element diffused among, and attracted by other matter, particularly by Water and Metals." When a body with an over quantity approached one with an under quantity, a discharge equalized the electrical fire in the two.