Well… almost
Known as “The First American,” we have a lot to be grateful for when it comes to Benjamin Franklin. He invented bifocals, the lightning rod, and the Franklin stove, to name a few. He was a Founding Father of the United States, a polymath who ranked up there with the greats, a scientist, dignitary, and, it seems, a candle wax conservationist.
Messing With the Clocks: Daylight Savings Time
You see, it was he who came up with this crazy idea of daylight savings time. While in Paris in 1784, Franklin published an essay titled An Economical Project for Diminishing the Cost of Light that proposed to economize the use of candles by rising earlier to take advantage of the morning sunlight. As he famously said, ”Early to bed and early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise.”
The concept of adjusting to the seasons and making the most of the longer summertime days was not an altogether new concept. Ancient civilizations were known to have practiced similar customs, but it’s thought to have been Franklin who brought the idea into modern times.
Changing the Alphabet: The Phonetic Alphabet and Spelling Reform
All due respect for our former President, but this cheeky fellow even tried to change how words were spelled! For poor spellers everywhere, there couldn’t be a crueler trick to play.
In his 1768 paper A Scheme for a new Alphabet and a Reformed Mode of Spelling Franklin proposed a more phonetic system for spelling the American English language. His alphabet was published in 1769 in Political, Miscellaneous, and Philosophical Pieces.
Franklin was convinced that his simplified, phonic alphabet would be easier to learn than the Saxon alphabet. He also hoped, once the alphabet was learned, that words would be more easily, and more correctly spelled. Alas, it never took hold. Maybe poor spellers would have benefitted from the changes after all.
Here is a great quote from Smithsonian.com’s article Benjamin Franklin’s Phonetic Alphabet:
“There can be no doubt that language has influence over a country and its populace. It’s an integral part of one’s national identity. Franklin just took this to the extreme. Perhaps he viewed the alphabet in the same way he saw the turkey, as a something “courageous” and “original” to America. The phonetic alphabet would be an American original too, and a reflection of the men and women living in the new country – pragmatic, efficient, egalitarian.”
And so we forge on, bleary-eyed in springtime, and rested in the fall with our Alphabet intact.
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Sources:
Timeanddate.com
Omniglot.com
Smithsonian.com
USHistory.org
Tagged: English, English language learning, Grammar, language learning 
