Benjamin Franklin and Eighteenth-Century American Libraries. By Margaret Barton Korty. [Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, New Series, Volume LV, Part 9.] (Philadelphia: the Society. 1965. Pp. 83. $2.00.)

1966 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Benjamin Franklin ◽  
American Philosophical Society

Ambiguity and Group Consensus

2011 ◽  
pp. 43-50
Author(s):  
Morgan M. Shepherd ◽  
Jr Martz ◽  
Vijay Raghavan
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Work Environment ◽  
Virtual Environment ◽  
Virtual Work ◽  
Benjamin Franklin ◽  
Constitutional Convention ◽  
Business World ◽  
Know How ◽  
Virtual Work Environment ◽  
To Come

When you assemble a number of people to have advantage of their joint wisdom, you inevitably assemble with those people all their prejudices, their passions, their errors or opinion, their local interests, and their selfish views. From such an assembly, can a perfect production be expected? ~ Benjamin Franklin, Constitutional Convention, September 15, 1787 Franklin’s eighteenth century question foreshadows a basic concern for today’s team-dominated business world. First, while individuals are still important, groups are becoming the de-facto unit of work for organizations today. Working cooperatively is becoming a necessity; working collaboratively is becoming paramount to career success. Second, as the work environment changes into a virtual work environment, it is important to know how groups deal with making decisions. In this light, before we ask groups to come to consensus in a virtual environment, we must be clear on how well they understand consensus itself.

Boston Electric

2020 ◽  
pp. 169-199
Author(s):  
Sara J. Schechner
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Benjamin Franklin ◽  
Scientific Instruments ◽  
Know How ◽  
Polite Society ◽  
Experimental Apparatus

Electricity was a new and developing field of research during the eighteenth century. With a focus on the experimental apparatus employed and the sociable exchange of ideas, this chapter examines how electricity was taught to Harvard students and members of polite society in the Boston area over the course of the century. Without local instrument makers or suppliers of glass and brass parts, colonial American experimenters had to import equipment and repair parts from London. When time and money discouraged imports, they became bricoleurs, incorporating recycled, traded, and ready-to-hand materials into their apparatus. Benjamin Franklin was an important intermediary in getting scientific instruments from London to Boston and Cambridge, and he shared instructional know-how so that locals could assemble their own Leyden jars and other electrical instruments.

Benjamin Franklin and the Leather-Apron Men: The Politics of Class in Eighteenth-Century Philadelphia

2009 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 161-175 ◽  
Author(s):  
SIMON P. NEWMAN
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Working Class ◽  
Benjamin Franklin ◽  
Class Identity ◽  
Urban Workers

Benjamin Franklin's autobiography reveals his deep investment in shaping and controlling how both his contemporaries and posterity assessed his life and achievements. This essay explores Franklin's construction and presentation of his pride in his working-class origins and identity, analysing how and why Franklin sought not to hide his poor origins but rather to celebrate them as a virtue. As an extremely successful printer, Franklin had risen from working-class obscurity to the highest ranks of Philadelphia society, yet unlike other self-made men of the era Franklin embraced and celebrated his artisanal roots, and he made deliberate use of his working-class identity during the Seven Years War and the subsequent imperial crisis, thereby consolidating his own reputation and firming up the support of urban workers who considered him one of their own.

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