biographies for famous inventors?

Question

does anyone know any good websites to find really good info for famous inventors like henry ford and benjamin franklin?

Answer 1

click here:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Ford

use Wikipedia

Answer 2

You may also want to consider your local public library. The staff at the library can show you where the inventor books are (there are some biographical sets). There are also biographies on many of the inventors.

Think "outside" the Internet and check out your library!

Answer 3

I INTRODUCTION
Ford, Henry (1863-1947), American industrialist, best known for his pioneering achievements in the automobile industry.

Ford was born on a farm near Dearborn, Michigan, on July 30, 1863, and educated in district schools. He became a machinist's apprentice in Detroit at the age of 16. From 1888 to 1899 he was a mechanical engineer, and later chief engineer, with the Edison Illuminating Company. In 1896, after experimenting for years in his leisure hours, he completed the construction of his first automobile, the Quadricycle. In 1903 he founded the Ford Motor Company.

II AUTOMOBILE PRODUCTION
In 1913 Ford began using standardized interchangeable parts and assembly-line techniques in his plant. Although Ford neither originated nor was the first to employ such practices, he was chiefly responsible for their general adoption and for the consequent great expansion of American industry and the raising of the American standard of living.

By early 1914 this innovation, although greatly increasing productivity, had resulted in a monthly labor turnover of 40 to 60 percent in his factory, largely because of the unpleasant monotony of assembly-line work and repeated increases in the production quotas assigned to workers. Ford met this difficulty by doubling the daily wage then standard in the industry, raising it from about $2.50 to $5. The net result was increased stability in his labor force and a substantial reduction in operating costs. These factors, coupled with the enormous increase in output made possible by new technological methods, led to an increase in company profits from $30 million in 1914 to $60 million in 1916.

In 1908 the Ford company initiated production of the celebrated Model T. Until 1927, when the Model T was discontinued in favor of a more up-to-date model, the company produced and sold about 15 million cars. Within the ensuing few years, however, Ford's preeminence as the largest producer and seller of automobiles in the nation was gradually lost to his competitors, largely because he was slow to adopt the practice of introducing a new model of automobile each year, which had become standard in the industry. During the 1930s Ford adopted the policy of the yearly changeover, but his company was unable to regain the position it had formerly held.

III LABOR PROBLEMS

In the period from 1937 to 1941, the Ford company became the only major manufacturer of automobiles in the Detroit area that had not recognized any labor union as the collective bargaining representative of employees. At hearings before the National Labor Relations Board Ford was found guilty of repeated violations of the National Labor Relations Act. The findings against him were upheld on appeal to the federal courts. Ford was constrained to negotiate a standard labor contract after a successful strike by the workers at his main plant at River Rouge, Michigan, in April 1941.

IV WARTIME PRODUCTION

Early in 1941 Ford was granted government contracts whereby he was, at first, to manufacture parts for bombers and, later, the entire airplane. He thereupon launched the construction of a huge plant at Willow Run, Michigan, where production was begun in May 1942. Despite certain technical difficulties, by the end of World War II (1945) this plant had manufactured more than 8000 planes.

V OTHER ACTIVITIES
Ford was active in several other fields besides those of automobile and airplane manufacturing. In 1915 he chartered a peace ship, which carried him and a number of like-minded individuals to Europe, where they attempted without success to persuade the belligerent governments to end World War I. He was nominated for the office of U.S. senator from Michigan in 1918 but was defeated in the election. In the following year he erected the Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit at a cost of $7.5 million. In 1919 he became the publisher of the Dearborn Independent, a weekly journal, which at first published anti-Semitic material. After considerable public protest, Ford directed that publication of such articles be discontinued and that a public apology be made to the Jewish people.

Advancing age obliged Ford to retire from the active direction of his gigantic enterprises in 1945. He died on April 7, 1947, in Dearborn. Ford left a personal fortune estimated at $500 to $700 million, bequeathing the largest share of his holdings in the Ford Motor Company to the Ford Foundation, a nonprofit organization.



Franklin, Benjamin (1706-1790), American printer, author, diplomat, philosopher, and scientist, whose many contributions to the cause of the American Revolution (1775-1783), and the newly formed federal government that followed, rank him among the country’s greatest statesmen.

Franklin was born on January 17, 1706, in Boston. His father, Josiah Franklin, a tallow chandler by trade, had 17 children; Benjamin was the 15th child and the 10th son. His mother, Abiah Folger, was his father’s second wife. The Franklin family was in modest circumstances, like most New Englanders of the time. After his attendance at grammar school from age eight to ten, Benjamin was taken into his father’s business. Finding the work uncongenial, however, he entered the employ of a cutler. At age 13 he was apprenticed to his brother James, who had recently returned from England with a new printing press. Benjamin learned the printing trade, devoting his spare time to the advancement of his education. His reading included Pilgrim’s Progress by the British preacher John Bunyan, Parallel Lives, the work of the Greek essayist and biographer Plutarch, Essay on Projects by the English journalist and novelist Daniel Defoe, and the Essays to Do Good by Cotton Mather, the American Congregational clergyman. When he acquired a copy of the third volume of the Spectator by the British statesmen and essayists Sir Richard Steele and Joseph Addison, he set himself the goal of mastering its prose style.

In 1721 his brother James Franklin established the New England Courant, and Benjamin, at the age of 15, was busily occupied in delivering the newspaper by day and in composing articles for it at night. These articles, published anonymously, won wide notice and acclaim for their pithy observations on the current scene. Because of its liberal bias, the New England Courant frequently incurred the displeasure of the colonial authorities. In 1722, as a consequence of an article considered particularly offensive, James Franklin was imprisoned for a month and forbidden to publish his paper, and for a while it appeared under Benjamin’s name.

II PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON

As a result of disagreements with James, Benjamin left Boston and made his way to Philadelphia, arriving in October 1723. There he worked at his trade and made numerous friends, among whom was Sir William Keith, the provincial governor of Pennsylvania. He persuaded Franklin to go to London to complete his training as a printer and to purchase the equipment needed to start his own printing establishment in Philadelphia. Young Franklin took this advice, arriving in London in December 1724. Not having received from Keith certain promised letters of introduction and credit, Franklin found himself, at age 18, without means in a strange city. With characteristic resourcefulness, he obtained employment at two of the foremost printing houses in London: Palmer’s and Watt’s. His appearance, bearing, and accomplishments soon won him the recognition of a number of the most distinguished figures in the literary and publishing world.

In October 1726, Franklin returned to Philadelphia and resumed his trade. The following year, with a number of his acquaintances, he organized a discussion group known as the Junto. In September 1729, he bought the Pennsylvania Gazette, a dull, poorly edited weekly newspaper, which he made, by his witty style and judicious selection of news, both entertaining and informative. In 1730 he married Deborah Read, a Philadelphia woman whom he had known before his trip to England.

III PROJECTS AND EXPERIMENTS
Franklin engaged in many public projects. In 1731 he founded what was probably the first public library in America, chartered in 1742 as the Philadelphia Library. He first published Poor Richard’s Almanack in 1732, under the pen name Richard Saunders. This modest volume quickly gained a wide and appreciative audience, and its homespun, practical wisdom exerted a pervasive influence upon the American character. In 1736 Franklin became clerk of the Pennsylvania General Assembly and the next year was appointed deputy postmaster of Philadelphia. About this time, he organized the first fire company in that city and introduced methods for the improvement of street paving and lighting. Always interested in scientific studies, he founded the American Philosophical Society, an organization for the promotion of science, in 1743. He devised means to correct the excessive smoking of chimneys and invented, around 1744, the Franklin stove, which furnished greater heat with a reduced consumption of fuel.

In 1747 Franklin began his electrical experiments with a simple apparatus that he received from Peter Collinson in England. He advanced a tenable theory of the Leyden jar, supported the hypothesis that lightning is an electrical phenomenon, and proposed an effective method of demonstrating this fact. His plan was published in London and carried out in England and France before he himself performed his celebrated experiment with the kite in 1752. He invented the lightning rod and offered what is called the “one-fluid” theory in explanation of the two kinds of electricity, positive and negative. In recognition of his impressive scientific accomplishments, Franklin received honorary degrees from the University of Saint Andrews and the University of Oxford. He also became a fellow of the Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge and, in 1753, was awarded its Copley Medal for distinguished contributions to experimental science. Franklin also exerted a great influence on education in Pennsylvania. In 1749 he wrote Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pennsylvania; its publication led to the establishment in 1751 of the Academy of Philadelphia, later to become the University of Pennsylvania. The curriculum he suggested was a considerable departure from the program of classical studies then in vogue. English and modern foreign languages were to be emphasized as well as mathematics and science.

IV PUBLIC OFFICE
In 1748 Franklin sold his printing business and, in 1750, was elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly, in which he served until 1764. He was appointed deputy postmaster general for the colonies in 1753, and in 1754 he was the delegate from Pennsylvania to the intercolonial congress that met at Albany to consider methods of dealing with the threatened French and Indian War (1754-1763). His Albany Plan, in many ways prophetic of the 1787 U.S. Constitution, provided for local independence within a framework of colonial union, but was too far in advance of public thinking to obtain ratification. It was his staunch belief that the adoption of this plan would have averted the American Revolution.

When the French and Indian War broke out, Franklin procured horses, wagons, and supplies for the British commander General Edward Braddock by pledging his own credit to the Pennsylvania farmers, who thereupon furnished the necessary equipment. The proprietors of Pennsylvania Colony, descendants of the Quaker leader William Penn, in conformity with their religious opposition to war, refused to allow their landholdings to be taxed for the prosecution of the war. Thus, in 1757, Franklin was sent to England by the Pennsylvania Assembly to petition the king for the right to levy taxes on proprietary lands. After completing his mission, he remained in England for five years as the chief representative of the American colonies. During this period he made friends with many prominent Englishmen, including the chemist and clergyman Joseph Priestley, the philosopher and historian David Hume, and the philosopher and economist Adam Smith.

Franklin returned to Philadelphia in 1762, where he remained until 1764, when he was once again dispatched to England as the agent of Pennsylvania. In 1766 he was interrogated before the House of Commons regarding the effects of the Stamp Act upon the colonies; his testimony was largely influential in securing the repeal of the act. Soon, however, new plans for taxing the colonies were introduced in Parliament, and Franklin was increasingly divided between his devotion to his native land and his loyalty as a subject of George III of Great Britain. Finally, in 1775, his powers of conciliation exhausted, Franklin sorrowfully acknowledged the inevitability of war. Sailing for America after an absence of 11 years, he reached Philadelphia on May 5, 1775, to find that the opening engagements of the Revolution—the battles of Lexington and Concord—had already been fought. He was chosen a member of the Second Continental Congress, serving on ten of its committees, and was made postmaster general, an office he held for one year.

V DIPLOMAT OF THE REVOLUTION
In 1775 Franklin traveled to Canada, suffering great hardship along the way, in a vain effort to enlist the cooperation and support of Canada in the Revolution. Upon his return, he became one of the committee of five chosen to draft the Declaration of Independence. He was also one of the signers of that historic document, addressing the assembly with the characteristic statement: “We must all hang together, or assuredly we shall all hang separately.” In September of the same year, he was chosen, with two other Americans, Arthur Lee and Silas Deane, to seek economic assistance in France. His scientific reputation, his integrity of character, and his wit and gracious manner made him extremely popular in French political, literary, and social circles, and his wisdom and ingenuity secured for the U.S. aid and concessions that perhaps no other man could have obtained. Against the vigorous opposition of the French minister of finance, Jacques Necker, and despite the jealous antagonism of his coldly formal American colleagues, he managed to obtain liberal grants and loans from Louis XVI of France. Franklin encouraged and materially assisted American privateers operating against the British navy, especially John Paul Jones. On February 6, 1778, Franklin negotiated the treaty of commerce and defensive alliance with France that represented, in effect, the turning point of the American Revolution. Seven months later, he was appointed by Congress as the first minister plenipotentiary from the U.S. to France.

In 1781 Franklin, John Adams, and John Jay were appointed to conclude a treaty of peace with Great Britain. The final treaty was signed at Versailles on September 3, 1783 (see Paris, Treaty of). During the remainder of his stay in France, Franklin was accorded honorary distinctions commensurate with his notable and diversified accomplishments. His scientific standing won him an appointment from the French king as one of the commissioners investigating the Austrian physician Franz Anton Mesmer and the phenomenon of animal magnetism. As a dignitary of one of the most distinguished Freemason lodges in France, Franklin had the opportunity of meeting and speaking with a number of philosophers and leading figures of the French Revolution (1789-1799), upon whose political thinking he exerted a profound influence. Although he favored a liberalization of the French government, he opposed change through violent revolution.

VI A FRAMER OF THE CONSTITUTION
In March 1785, Franklin, at his own request, left his duties in France and returned to Philadelphia, where he was immediately chosen president of the Pennsylvania executive council (1785-87). In 1787 he was elected a delegate to the convention that drew up the U.S. Constitution. Franklin was deeply interested in philanthropic projects, and one of his last public acts was to sign a petition to the U.S. Congress, on February 12, 1790, as president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, urging the abolition of slavery and the suppression of the slave trade. Two months later, on April 17, Franklin died in his Philadelphia home at 84 years of age.

Franklin’s most notable service to his country was the result of his great skill in diplomacy. To his common sense, wisdom, wit, and industry, he joined great firmness of purpose, matchless tact, and broad tolerance. Both as a brilliant conversationalist and a sympathetic listener, Franklin had a wide and appreciative following in the intellectual salons of the day. For the most part, his literary reputation rests on his unfinished Autobiography, which is considered by many the epitome of his life and character.