Benjamin Franklin (1706-1790) was the tenth son of the seventeen children of a Boston soapmaker/candlemaker. In the 1740's electricity was a fashionable subject, introduced to the Colonies by an electrical machine sent by one of Franklin's English correspondents. In 1746 Franklin began to investigate electrical phenomena. His experiments and machines were described in personal letters to England and were relayed to the Royal Society which awarded him a medal and elected him a fellow. Franklin invented many terms still used in discussing electricity (positive, negative, battery, conductor, etc.)