The following is a fantasy interview with Benjamin Franklin. Franklin was one of the most interesting and surprising figures of the American colonial period.

Host : Our guest today on The Show is Dr. Benjamin Franklin. Dr. Franklin was born in Boston, but his adopted cities are Philadelphia, London and Paris. Dr. Franklin is an entrepreneur, inventor, journalist, publisher, and statesman.

As an inventor and man of science, he invented the Franklin stove, bifocal glasses, the lightning rod, and proved that electricity and lightning are the same. Dr. Franklin’s many experiments with electricity were published in 4 languages ​​and brought him international fame.

As an entrepreneur, he founded the University of Pennsylvania, the first lending library in America, a fire department, a hospital, and an insurance company. He also owned several valuable properties in downtown Philadelphia.

As an editor, he is famous for Poor Richard’s Almanac, which ran for 25 years, and he became wealthy as a journalist and owner of the Pennsylvania Gazette.

As a statesman, Dr. Franklin presided over the Constitutional Convention in 1776 and was one of five members of the committee that drafted the Declaration of Independence. During the Revolutionary War, Dr. Franklin spent many years in Paris securing financial and military aid for the war effort. At the end of the war he was appointed to negotiate the peace treaty with England.

Welcome to the Program, Dr. Franklin.

franklin : Thank you for the opportunity. As I once said, “To be successful, seize opportunities as quickly as you seize conclusions.”

Host: First of all, how important was your role in the founding of our country? French Finance Minister Jacques Turgot said that you “snatched the thunderbolt from the heavens and the scepter from the tyrants.”

franklin : I don’t feel like I should take too much credit for the founding of America. The revolution was the work of many able and brave men, in which it is honor enough for me if I am allowed a small part.

Host: That’s very humble.

franklin : As I once said, “Humility makes great men twice honorable.”

Host : Tell us about your role in drafting the Declaration of Independence.

franklin : I was the oldest member of the committee of five who were assigned to draft the Declaration. John Adams seemed the most likely candidate to draft the document, as he had the most experience in drafting such documents. But I liked the young Jefferson’s style better, and in the end we decided to let him write the draft. Later, in June 1776, while I was at home recovering from boils and gout, Thomas Jefferson asked me for advice on his draft of the Declaration. He invited me to read it and suggest any changes he thought were necessary. I only made a few changes, though I did remove the words “sacred and undeniable” and replaced them with “evident”, as in “We hold these truths to be self-evident.”

Host: Tell us a bit about your experiments with electricity. They made you famous, but I’m not sure I know the whole story about your kite experiment.

franklin : For several years I had been fascinated by electricity. Our Library Company had received an electric typewriter from one of my friends in England. My friends and I devised many ingenious experiments related to observation and measurement that we described in letters to the Royal Society in London. Those letters were later collected in book form and translated into other languages. In fact, I had to invent many of the terms now commonly used with electricity to describe my experiments. Some of the words I coined are battery, load, capacitor, conductor, positive, negative, and armature.

In 1752 it occurred to me that lightning was an electrical discharge of fire between a body with an excessive amount and a body with an insufficient amount equaling the difference between the two. I wanted to do an experiment with the tower of Christ Church in Philadelphia, but I got impatient waiting for the tower to be built. It occurred to me that a kite might get closer to a thunderstorm than the needle, so I devised a plan to launch a kite during a thunderstorm to see if I could detect the electricity emanating from the storm.

Weather being what it is in Philly, it wasn’t long before the storm clouds rolled in and I was given the opportunity to test my idea. My son William, who was 21 at the time, was the only one who helped me lift the kite because he didn’t want too many people to know what he was doing. A nearby field had a convenient shed where I could sit during the storm and wait for a suitable cloud to approach. Considerable time passed before promising clouds appeared, and they all turned out to be a wasted effort. Finally, a good cloud made the loose strands of the hemp kite string move and lift. I tapped my knuckle on the key within my reach and felt the electric spark for myself. This confirmed my belief that lightning was a form of electricity.

Host: Wow, that lightning bolt was a stroke of good luck.

franklin : Good luck, maybe, but maybe good planning. As I once said, “He who waits on fortune is never sure of dinner.”

Hhost: The story of how you met your wife is a funny story. Can you tell us about that?

franklin : Certainly, and this is a story you can find in my book, Autobiography, which you can find on Amazon.com and local bookstores everywhere. I remember the day well. It was a Sunday, October 6, 5:23 p.m. I was just a 17 year old and hadn’t had much luck getting a reputable and sufficient job. I had left Boston for New York, but when nothing seemed providential in New York I went to Philadelphia to become a printer.

On my first day in Philly, and with only a few coins in my pocket, I stopped at a bakery and for three cents I received three big puffy bagels. He had a bun under each arm and was chewing on the third as he walked down Market Street. As I approached the Read family residence, his daughter, Deborah, spotted me from the front door. I was a hideous sight. As Deborah commented later, I made a ridiculously awkward appearance. But seven years later we formed a common-law marriage. We had to do it that way because Deborah had gotten married while I was in England in the intervening years and then her husband left her and disappeared completely. Deborah and I were happily married for 44 years and raised two sons and a daughter.

Host: Dr. Franklin, we want to thank you for coming to our show today. But before we say goodbye, I want to ask you one last question, if you’ll allow me. Did you really say, “Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy?”

franklin : I’m glad you asked that, because I’ve been misquoted for many years. What I actually said was in a letter to my friend André Morellet in 1779. This is what I wrote: “We hear of the conversion of water into wine at the wedding in Cana as a miracle. But this conversion is, by the goodness of God, made each day before our eyes. Here is the rain that descends from heaven on our vineyards, there it enters the roots of the vines, to become wine, constant proof that God loves us, and loves to see us happy .”

With that bit of wisdom to share, I wish you and your listeners and readers a good grace-filled day.

Host: Thank you Dr Franklin. It has been a pleasure having you on The Program.