April 17, 1790: America Loses One of Its Most Inventive Minds
1790: Benjamin Franklin dies.
Franklin’s work with electricity brought him international fame, several honorary degrees and membership in Britain’s Royal Society, but he was active in other areas, too. He studied weather closely and proposed better methods for tracking storm progression. He invented the catheter while trying to help his ill brother, and he conducted experiments to make agriculture more efficient.
Franklin retained a lifelong interest in science but the events of the day moved him inexorably toward the politics of revolution.
When Franklin died in 1790 at the age of 84, more than 20,000 people attended the funeral.