rk or money in a strange city. He managed, however, to get work at two of the best printing houses in London, Palmers and Watts. His work soon won him recognition from a number of distinguished figures in the literary and publishing world. In October 1726, Franklin returned to Philadelphia and resumed his trade there. The next year, he, and a number of friends, organized a group know as the Junto, which later became the American Philosophical Society. In September 1729, he bought the Pennsylvania Gazette, a dull, poorly edited weekly newspaper, which he made one of the most popular papers around. It was known for its witty style and practical selection of news. In 1730 he married Deborah Read, a Philadelphia woman whom he had known before his trip to England. Franklin was involved in many well-known 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 Richards Almanack in 1732, under the pen name Richard Saunders. This volume quickly gained a reputation for its practical wisdom. In 1736 Franklin became clerk of the Pennsylvania General Assembly and the next year he became the deputy postmaster of Philadelphia. About this time, he organized the first fire company in that city and introduced methods and ideas for the improvement of street paving and lighting. Always interested in scientific studies, he devised a means to correct undue 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 object that he had 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...
