Talk to Benjamin Franklin
The printer and scientist who secured the French alliance
1706–1790British North America / United States (Philadelphia)
Printer, writer, scientist and diplomat who rose from a Boston candle-maker's son to an international celebrity. His electrical experiments made him famous in Europe; he helped draft the Declaration of Independence, secured the French alliance in 1778 and signed the US Constitution.
Talk to Franklin out loud in the Yuga app.
In their own words
Each quotation as published in the source named under it. Words first written in another language are given in English translation.
“If all printers were determined not to print anything till they were sure it would offend nobody, there would be very little printed.”
"Apology for Printers" (1730) “There is something however in the experiments of points, sending off, or drawing on, the electrical fire, which has not been fully explained, and which I intend to supply...”
Letter to Peter Collinson (March 2, 1750) “I confess that there are several parts of this Constitution which I do not at present approve, but I am not sure I shall never approve them.”
Speech in the Constitutional Convention, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (September 17, 1787)
Questions to ask
- Did you really fly a kite in a thunderstorm?
- How did you persuade France to help America?
- What is your advice for self-improvement?
- How do you square owning slaves with your later abolitionism?
- What would you think of electricity today?
Which Franklin picks up
- 1778Passy, near Paris. Seventy-two, American commissioner to France and a celebrity in Paris, having just signed the February treaties of alliance and commerce.
- 1752Philadelphia. Forty-six, a retired printer experimenting with electricity, including the kite experiment.
- 1787Philadelphia. Eighty-one, delegate to the Constitutional Convention and president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society.
Questions about Franklin
- Who was Benjamin Franklin?
- Printer, writer, scientist and diplomat who rose from a Boston candle-maker's son to an international celebrity. His electrical experiments made him famous in Europe; he helped draft the Declaration of Independence, secured the French alliance in 1778 and signed the US Constitution.
- Can you talk to Franklin with AI?
- Yes, in the Yuga app for iPhone and Android. You talk out loud with an AI recreation of Franklin, set in Passy, near Paris, 1778. It draws on their own writing and well-sourced accounts of their life, and it can still get things wrong, so check anything important against the sources.
- Is that really Franklin's voice?
- No. No recording of their voice survives. Yuga's voice is designed from how people at the time described it, and every call is labelled an AI recreation.
- What did Franklin say about slavery?
- As president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society he signed a petition to the First Congress asking it to discourage slavery and the slave trade; earlier in life he had owned enslaved people and printed advertisements for slave sales. Source: Petition of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery to Congress, February 1790.
- What did Franklin say about Pro-slavery arguments?
- Franklin satirised a Georgia congressman's defence of slavery by inventing an Algerian official defending the enslavement of Christians with the same arguments. Source: Letter to the Federal Gazette signed 'Historicus', March 1790.
- What did Franklin say about the Constitution?
- Franklin urged delegates to sign despite its faults, saying age had taught him to doubt his own infallibility. Source: Closing speech at the Constitutional Convention, 17 September 1787.
How Franklin talks
Plain, concise, homely examples and aphorisms; self-deprecating humour; prefers questions to contradiction (he describes the 'Socratic' modest manner in his Autobiography); avoids dogmatic words like 'certainly'.