Posted on 01/10/2024 9:42:29 PM PST by SunkenCiv
On February 5, 1824, Samuel Vaughan Merrick and William H. Keating founded The Franklin Institute of the State of Pennsylvania for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts. Within three years of its founding, that promotion took place through public lectures, a high school, a library, public exhibitions, and a research journal, and many of these endeavors remain core activities to this day... For the organization's first century, the Institute offered classes in mechanics, drafting, and engineering, and promoted science and invention. In 1930, despite the Great Depression, The Franklin Institute and the Poor Richard Club began to seek funds to build a new science museum and memorial hall. In just twelve days, the community contributed $5.1 million, and in 1932, the cornerstone of the new Franklin Institute was laid at 20th Street and the Benjamin Franklin Parkway...
...The Franklin Institute Awards program is America's oldest and most prestigious recognition of achievement in science, technology, and industry. The Institute's annual presentation of the Benjamin Franklin Medals in seven fields of science and engineering, the Bower Award and Prize for Achievement in Science, and the Bower Award for Business Leadership provides public recognition and encouragement of excellence in science and technology and celebrates the legacy of our namesake... The honor roll of more than 2,000 Franklin Institute Awards laureates includes Nikola Tesla, Marie and Pierre Curie, Rudolf Diesel, Orville Wright, Thomas Edison, Max Planck, Albert Einstein, Frank Lloyd Wright, Stephen Hawking, Gordon Moore, Jane Goodall, Elizabeth Blackburn, Steven Squyres, Bill Gates, and Frances Arnold—to name but a few. To date, 120 Franklin Institute laureates also have been honored with Nobel Prizes.
(Excerpt) Read more at fi.edu ...
...My Electrical Apparatus I give to Yale College at New-haven in Connecticut...Last Will and Testament [28 April 1757]
...French Mathematician Charles-Joseph Mathon de la Cour to spoof Franklin's Poor Richard's Almanack with the parody "Fortunate Richard." Ben Franklin possessed a famous optimism and Mathon de la Cour wanted to make fun of it. He jokingly had Fortunate Richard will a modest sum of money with the instructions not to distribute it for 5 centuries. In that time, Fortunate Richard said it would grow considerably.
Mathon de la Cour may not have fully appreciated the power of compound interest, but Ben Franklin did. In a classic "who gets the last laugh" maneuver, Franklin did precisely what Mathon de la Cour had Fortunate Richard do. He set up trusts in his will for the cities of Boston and Philadelphia that were intended to exist for 200 years.
Now, being the financial genius he was, Franklin set parameters on how the money was to be invested to obtain a 5% annual return. (He wanted it used to help kickstart budding entrepreneurs like himself.) His will even calculated where he expected the trusts to have grown to in 1890 (when the first distribution was to be made) and in 1990 (when the trusts were to be terminated).
Based on the math outlined in his will, Franklin's initial 1790 bequest of $4,000 (he actually used pounds sterling, not dollars) would have grown to more than $7 million in 1990. In reality, by 1990 the Boston Franklin Trust had grown to $5 million while the Philadelphia Franklin Trust had grown to $2.25 million. Not quite up to Franklin's expectations, but still sizable.Could You Turn A Joke Into Millions Like Ben Franklin Did? | Chris Carosa | July 3, 2019 | Forbes
Less than a year before his death on April 17, 1790, Benjamin Franklin added a codicil, or addendum, to his will. In it, he bequeathed 1000 pounds sterling, or what would have been the equivalent of $4000, to the cities of Boston and Philadelphia. (Franklin had been born and raised in Boston but left for Philadelphia when he was 17, making both cities near to his heart.)
The money, he wrote, was to be handled in a very particular way. For the first 100 years, each of the 1000 pounds sterling would accrue interest and be used to fund loans for young tradesmen starting out in business. Franklin, who had become a printer as the result of a loan given to him, valued resources for apprentices.
At the end of the 100 years, the cities could take 75 percent of the principal and spend it in public works...
Franklin had been a lifelong philanthropist, gifting Philadelphia with its first public library, its first hospital, its first volunteer fire department, and even its first streetlight. His Academy of Philadelphia became the University of Pennsylvania in 1750. The funds for his trusts were accumulated from his salary as governor of Pennsylvania from 1785 to 1788, a move informed by the belief that public servants shouldn't be paid. It was an edict he even tried to include in the Constitution...
Inspired by Franklin's philanthropy, in 1936 multimillionaire Jonathan Holden used $2.8 million to fund a series of trusts, some of which weren't due to be released for up to 1000 years. Before the idea was leveled in court and converted to trusts that paid out yearly instead of disrupting an economy in the distant future, his donation to the state of Pennsylvania alone would have been worth $424 trillion.How a 200-Year-Old Gift From Benjamin Franklin Made Boston and Philadelphia a Fortune | Jake Rossen | August 20, 2020 | Mental Floss
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After Franklin died at the age of 84 on April 17, 1790, his codicil set in motion processes that even a seemingly endless chain of corrupt municipal officials and special interests have never been quite able to destroy. In the first 100 years, hundreds of young entrepreneurs in each of the two cities got a start with small loans from his bequests. Recipients of the seed money included carpenters, bakers, shoemakers, coopers, tailors, painters, printers, cabinetmakers, blacksmiths, tanners, clockmakers and bookbinders. Many of these artisans became actively engaged in civic affairs, just as Franklin had anticipated. Liberty Browne, a Philadelphia silversmith who received a $319 loan in 1800, was elected president of the Select Council of the City of Philadelphia in 1813. Charles Wells, a bricklayer who received a $100 loan in 1808, was elected mayor of Boston in 1831.
Meanwhile, even though officials blithely ignored Franklin's wishes and diverted huge sums from his bequests to cover the public debt in Philadelphia and to finance various pet public construction projects in Boston, the money in the two trusts continued to grow...
On Sept. 30, 1890, Albert D. Bache, a U.S. Navy paymaster and one of four great-grandchildren of Franklin's only daughter, Sally, filed a legal petition in Philadelphia on behalf of the heirs arguing that the money was rightfully theirs. The crux of their petition was that there was no basis in English common law for trusts of the sort he created. On October 9, the heirs presented a similar petition in Boston.
Six months later, Judge Clement Biddle Penrose dismissed the heirs' Philadelphia petition. The decision was appealed, and it took three years before it was finally settled. Judge J. Arnold of the Philadelphia County Court ultimately ruled, "The fact that a charity is a perpetuity, is no objection to it; and a charity may be created either in perpetuity or for a term of years." The Boston petition was also dismissed. Franklin had prevailed against his avaricious descendants...Ben Franklin's Gift That Keeps on Giving | Stephan A. Schwartz | 03/22/2018 | History.net
As a child, living in south Jersey across the river from Philadelphia, family trips and school field trips to the Franklin Institute were some of the most wonderful experiences in my early education. They were inspirational. I still have some souvenirs from those visits.
Sitting in the Fels Planetarium gave me my interest and lifelong love of astronomy. And the giant heart nearly turned me into a biologist.
Love the train and the heart.
When you enter the Institute's great hall after the entry lobby, the seated marble statue of Franklin has a grandeur like the Lincoln Memorial. The science exhibits and planetarium are worth an entire day.
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