An Unintended American Revolution,” Harvard professor Joyce E. Chaplin reveals how this relatively modest invention ...

Franklin so doggedly pursued smoke abatement that a friend called him a “universal Smoke Doctor.” His first stove, marketed in 1741, was in essence a pair of iron boxes sold as eight flat-packed ...

The list of his inventions included: bifocals; the medical catheter; the odometer; the Franklin stove (a wood burning stove that made home heating safer); and, of course, the lightning rod.