Generous spirit, generous community

In the early 1760s, Benjamin Franklin was one of the most popular people in the world. The writer, printer, inventor and electricity pioneer was known throughout the British Colonies in America, as well as in Europe, as a respected intellectual and diplomat. While we know him as one of the Founding Fathers of the United States, he spent almost a third of his life in Europe. Eight of those years were spent in France, working to secure support from the French military during the Revolutionary War. But before that, he spent 18 years in England as a diplomatic representative from the colonies.

It was during that time when Franklin first witnessed a musician play a series of glass bowls by wetting his fingers and drawing them across the bowls’ rims. The sound was haunting and otherworldly — like nothing he, nor anyone else, had ever heard before. But as Franklin was transfixed by the sound, he saw what many great innovators see when witnessing something new: inefficiencies. The musician was moving all over the place, working far too hard to make these angelic sounds. So Franklin went about fixing the problem.