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.

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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)