An Archive of 8,000 Benjamin Franklin Papers Now Digitized & Put Online

Let me quick­ly pass along some good news from the Library of Con­gress: “The papers of Amer­i­can sci­en­tist, states­man and diplo­mat Ben­jamin Franklin have been dig­i­tized and are now avail­able online for the first time.… The Franklin papers con­sist of approx­i­mate­ly 8,000 items most­ly dat­ing from the 1770s and 1780s. These include the peti­tion that the First Con­ti­nen­tal Con­gress sent to Franklin, then a colo­nial diplo­mat in Lon­don, to deliv­er to King George III; let­ter­books Franklin kept as he nego­ti­at­ed the Treaty of Paris that end­ed the Rev­o­lu­tion­ary War; drafts of the treaty; notes doc­u­ment­ing his sci­en­tif­ic obser­va­tions, and cor­re­spon­dence with fel­low sci­en­tists.” Find the dig­i­tized col­lec­tion of papers here.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hamil­ton Mania Inspires the Library of Con­gress to Put 12,000 Alexan­der Hamil­ton Doc­u­ments Online

The Instru­ment Ben­jamin Franklin Invent­ed, the Glass Armon­i­ca, Plays Tchaikovsky’s “Dance of the Sug­ar Plum Fairy”

Ben Franklin’s List of 200 Syn­onyms for “Drunk”: “Moon-Ey’d,” “Ham­mer­ish,” “Stew’d” & More (1737)