The Gulf Stream was first mapped by none other than Benjamin Franklin.
Founding father and inventor
· Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston in 1706, the son of a chandler and the 15th of 17 children
· First apprenticed at 12 as a printer to his brother James, he established a successful printing house, founding Poor Richard's Almanac, celebrated for its aphorisms
· He was elected to the colonial assembly, but his invention of the Franklin stove led him to turn to researching electricity in 1746
· His work established the distinction between positive and negative electricity, and showed that lightning and electricity are the same. He was among the first to advocate lightning conductors
· He is credited with discovering the path of storms across North America, the direction of the Gulf Stream and the properties of colours in absorbing light
· In 1764 he was sent to England to dispute the right of parliament to tax America without representation. In 1775 he was a founding father who helped draft the Declaration of Independence
· In signing the declaration he warned colleagues: "We must indeed all hang together, or most assuredly we shall surely all hang separately."
· He negotiated the French arms and money which enabled the colonists to win the war of independence. Franklin also negotiated the treaty which ended it
· He retired from public life in 1788 but in 1790, the year of his death, invented bifocal spectacles.