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An example of a basic strategy is shown in the table below, which applies to a game with the following specifications: Key: Most basic strategy decisions are the same for all blackjack games. Rule variations call for changes in only a few situations. For example, to use the table above on a game with the stand-on-soft-17 rule (which favors the player, and is typically found only at higher-limit tables today) only 6 cells would need to be changed: hit on 11 "vs." A, hit on 15 "vs." A, stand on 17 "vs." A, stand on A,7 "vs." 2, stand on A,8 "vs." 6, and split on 8,8 "vs." A. Regardless of the specific rule variations, taking insurance or "even money" is never the correct play under a basic strategy. Estimates of the house edge for blackjack games quoted by casinos and gaming regulators are based on the assumption that the players follow basic strategy. Most blackjack games have a house edge of between 0.5% and 1%, placing blackjack among the cheapest casino table games for the player. Casino promotions such as complimentary matchplay vouchers or 2:1 blackjack payouts allow players to acquire an advantage without deviating from basic strategy.
Composition-dependent strategy. The basic strategy is based on a player's point total and the dealer's visible card. Players can sometimes improve on this decision by considering the composition of their hand, not just the point total. For example, players should ordinarily stand when holding 12 against a dealer 4. But in a single deck game, players should hit if their 12 consists of a 10 and a 2. The presence of a 10 in the player's hand has two consequences: Even when basic and composition-dependent strategies lead to different actions, the difference in expected reward is small, and it becomes smaller with more decks. Using a composition-dependent strategy rather than a basic strategy in a single-deck game reduces the house edge by 4 in 10,000, which falls to 3 in 100,000 for a six-deck game. Advantage play. Blackjack has been a high-profile target for advantage players since the 1960s. Advantage play attempts to win more using skills such as memory, computation, and observation. While these techniques are legal, they can give players a mathematical edge in the game, making advantage players unwanted customers for casinos. Advantage play can lead to ejection or blacklisting. Some advantageous play techniques in blackjack include:
Card counting. During the course of a blackjack shoe, the dealer exposes the dealt cards. Players can infer from their accounting of the exposed cards which cards remain. These inferences can be used in the following ways: A card counting system assigns a point score to each card rank (e.g., 1 point for 2–6, 0 points for 7–9, and −1 point for 10–A). When a card is exposed, a counter adds the score of that card to a running total, the 'count'. A card counter uses this count to make betting and playing decisions. The count starts at 0 for a freshly shuffled deck for "balanced" counting systems. Unbalanced counts are often started at a value that depends on the number of decks used in the game. Blackjack's house edge is usually around 0.5–1% when players use basic strategy. Card counting can give the player an edge of up to about 2%. Card counting works best when a few cards remain. This makes single-deck games better for counters. As a result, casinos are more likely to insist that players do not reveal their cards to one another in single-deck games. In games with more decks, casinos limit penetration by ending the shoe and reshuffling when one or more decks remain undealt. Casinos also sometimes use a shuffling machine to reintroduce the cards whenever a deck has been played.
Card counting is legal, but a casino might inform counters that they are no longer welcome to play blackjack. Sometimes a casino might ban a card counter from the property. The use of external devices to assist in card counting is illegal in Nevada. Shuffle tracking. Another advantage play technique, mainly applicable in multi-deck games, involves tracking groups of cards (also known as slugs, clumps, or packs) through the shuffle and then playing and betting according to when those cards come into play from a new shoe. Shuffle tracking requires excellent eyesight and powers of visual estimation but is harder to detect; shuffle trackers' actions are largely unrelated to the composition of the cards in the shoe. Arnold Snyder's articles in "Blackjack Forum" magazine brought shuffle tracking to the general public. His book, "The Shuffle Tracker's Cookbook", mathematically analyzed the player edge available from shuffle tracking based on the actual size of the tracked slug. Jerry L. Patterson also developed and published a shuffle-tracking method for tracking favorable clumps of cards and cutting them into play and tracking unfavorable clumps of cards and cutting them out of play.
Identifying concealed cards. The player can also gain an advantage by identifying cards from distinctive wear markings on their backs, or by hole carding (observing during the dealing process the front of a card dealt face-down). These methods are generally legal although their status in particular jurisdictions may vary. Side bets. Many blackjack tables offer side bets on various outcomes including: The side wager is typically placed in a designated area next to the box for the main wager. A player wishing to wager on a side bet usually must place a wager on blackjack. Some games require that the blackjack wager should equal or exceed any side bet wager. A non-controlling player of a blackjack hand is usually permitted to place a side bet regardless of whether the controlling player does so. The house edge for side bets is generally higher than for the blackjack game itself. Nonetheless, side bets can be susceptible to card counting. A side count designed specifically for a particular side bet can improve the player's edge. Only a few side bets, like "Insurance" and "Lucky Ladies", correlate well with the high-low counting system and offer a sufficient win rate to justify the effort of advantage play.
In team play, it is common for team members to be dedicated to only counting a side bet using a specialized count. Video blackjack. Some casinos, as well as general betting outlets, provide blackjack among a selection of casino-style games at electronic consoles. Video blackjack game rules are generally more favorable to the house; e.g., paying out only even money for winning blackjacks. Video and online blackjack games generally deal each round from a fresh shoe (i.e., use an RNG for each deal), rendering card counting ineffective in most situations. Variants and related games. Blackjack is a member of the family of traditional card games played recreationally worldwide. Most of these games have not been adapted for casino play. Furthermore, the casino game development industry actively produces blackjack variants, most of which are ultimately not adopted by casinos. The following are the most prominent and established variants in casinos. Examples of local traditional and recreational related games include French "vingt-et-un" ('twenty-one') and German "Siebzehn und Vier" ('seventeen and four'). Neither game allows splitting. An ace counts only eleven, but two aces count as a blackjack. It is mostly played in private circles and barracks. The popular British member of the "vingt-un" family is called "pontoon", the name being probably a corruption of "vingt-et-un".
Blackjack Hall of Fame. In 2002, professional gamblers worldwide were invited to nominate great blackjack players for admission into the Blackjack Hall of Fame. Seven members were inducted in 2002, with new people inducted every year after. The Hall of Fame is at the Barona Casino in San Diego. Members include Edward O. Thorp, author of the 1960s book "Beat the Dealer"; Ken Uston, who popularized the concept of team play; Arnold Snyder, author and editor of the "Blackjack Forum" trade journal; and Stanford Wong, author and popularizer of "Wonging".
Bicarbonate In inorganic chemistry, bicarbonate (IUPAC-recommended nomenclature: hydrogencarbonate) is an intermediate form in the deprotonation of carbonic acid. It is a polyatomic anion with the chemical formula . Bicarbonate serves a crucial biochemical role in the physiological pH buffering system. The term "bicarbonate" was coined in 1814 by the English chemist William Hyde Wollaston. The name lives on as a trivial name. Chemical properties. The bicarbonate ion (hydrogencarbonate ion) is an anion with the empirical formula and a molecular mass of 61.01 daltons; it consists of one central carbon atom surrounded by three oxygen atoms in a trigonal planar arrangement, with a hydrogen atom attached to one of the oxygens. It is isoelectronic with nitric acid . The bicarbonate ion carries a negative one formal charge and is an amphiprotic species which has both acidic and basic properties. It is both the conjugate base of carbonic acid ; and the conjugate acid of , the carbonate ion, as shown by these equilibrium reactions:
A bicarbonate salt forms when a positively charged ion attaches to the negatively charged oxygen atoms of the ion, forming an ionic compound. Many bicarbonates are soluble in water at standard temperature and pressure; in particular, sodium bicarbonate contributes to total dissolved solids, a common parameter for assessing water quality. Physiological role. Bicarbonate () is a vital component of the pH buffering system of the human body (maintaining acid–base homeostasis). 70%–75% of CO2 in the body is converted into carbonic acid (H2CO3), which is the conjugate acid of and can quickly turn into it. With carbonic acid as the central intermediate species, bicarbonate – in conjunction with water, hydrogen ions, and carbon dioxide – forms this buffering system, which is maintained at the volatile equilibrium required to provide prompt resistance to pH changes in both the acidic and basic directions. This is especially important for protecting tissues of the central nervous system, where pH changes too far outside of the normal range in either direction could prove disastrous (see acidosis or alkalosis). Recently it has been also demonstrated that cellular bicarbonate metabolism can be regulated by mTORC1 signaling.
Additionally, bicarbonate plays a key role in the digestive system. It raises the internal pH of the stomach, after highly acidic digestive juices have finished in their digestion of food. Bicarbonate also acts to regulate pH in the small intestine. It is released from the pancreas in response to the hormone secretin to neutralize the acidic chyme entering the duodenum from the stomach. Bicarbonate in the environment. Bicarbonate is the dominant form of dissolved inorganic carbon in sea water, and in most fresh waters. As such it is an important sink in the carbon cycle. Some plants like "Chara" utilize carbonate and produce calcium carbonate (CaCO3) as a result of biological metabolism. In freshwater ecology, strong photosynthetic activity by freshwater plants in daylight releases gaseous oxygen into the water and at the same time produces bicarbonate ions. These shift the pH upward until in certain circumstances the degree of alkalinity can become toxic to some organisms or can make other chemical constituents such as ammonia toxic. In darkness, when no photosynthesis occurs, respiration processes release carbon dioxide, and no new bicarbonate ions are produced, resulting in a rapid fall in pH.
The flow of bicarbonate ions from rocks weathered by the carbonic acid in rainwater is an important part of the carbon cycle. Other uses. The most common salt of the bicarbonate ion is sodium bicarbonate, NaHCO3, which is commonly known as baking soda. When heated or exposed to an acid such as acetic acid (vinegar), sodium bicarbonate releases carbon dioxide. This is used as a leavening agent in baking. Ammonium bicarbonate is used in the manufacturing of some cookies, crackers, and biscuits. Diagnostics. In diagnostic medicine, the blood value of bicarbonate is one of several indicators of the state of acid–base physiology in the body. It is measured, along with chloride, potassium, and sodium, to assess electrolyte levels in an electrolyte panel test (which has Current Procedural Terminology, CPT, code 80051). The parameter "standard bicarbonate concentration" (SBCe) is the bicarbonate concentration in the blood at a PaCO2 of , full oxygen saturation and 36 °C.
Bernie Federko Bernard Allan Federko (born May 12, 1956) is a Canadian former professional ice hockey centre who played fourteen seasons in the National Hockey League from 1976 through 1990. Playing career. Federko began playing hockey at a young age in his home town of Foam Lake, Saskatchewan. He was captain of the 1971 Bantam provincial champions. He also played Senior hockey with the local Foam Lake Flyers of the Fishing Lake Hockey League, winning the league scoring title as a bantam-aged player. Federko continued his career with the Saskatoon Blades of the WHL where he set and still holds the team record for assists. He played three seasons with the Blades, and in his final year with the club he led the league in assists and points in both the regular season "and" playoffs. Federko was drafted 7th overall by the St. Louis Blues in the 1976 NHL Amateur Draft. He started the next season with the Kansas City Blues of the Central Hockey League and was leading the league in points when he was called up mid-season to play 31 games with St. Louis. He scored three hat tricks in those 31 games. In the 1978–79 NHL season, Federko developed into a bona fide star, as he scored 95 points.
Federko scored 100 points in a season four times, and was a consistent and underrated performer for the Blues. Federko scored at least 90 points in seven of the eight seasons between 1978 and 1986, and became the first player in NHL history to record at least 50 assists in 10 consecutive seasons. However, in an era when Wayne Gretzky was scoring 200 points a season, Federko never got the attention many felt he deserved. In 1986, in a poll conducted by GOAL magazine, he was named the most overlooked talent in hockey. His General Manager Ron Caron said he was "A great playmaker. He makes the average or above average player look like a star at times. He's such an unselfish player." On March 19, 1988, Federko became the 22nd NHL player to record 1000 career points. After he had a poor season as a captain in 1988–89, he was traded to the Detroit Red Wings with Tony McKegney for future Blues star Adam Oates, and Paul MacLean. In Detroit, Federko re-united with former Blues head coach Jacques Demers, but he had to play behind Steve Yzerman and did not get his desired ice time. After his lowest point output since his rookie season, Federko decided to retire after the 1989–90 season, having played exactly 1,000 NHL games with his final game on April 1, 1990.
Post-NHL career. Less than a year after retiring as a player, the Blues retired number 24 in his honour on March 16, 1991. Federko was eventually inducted into the Hockey Hall of Fame in 2002, the first Hall of Famer to earn his credentials primarily as a Blue. Currently, Federko is a television colour commentator and studio analyst for Bally Sports Midwest during Blues broadcasts. He was the head coach/general manager of the St. Louis Vipers roller hockey team of the Roller Hockey International for the 1993 and 1994 seasons. External links.
Buffalo, New York Buffalo is the second largest city in the U.S. state of New York and county seat of Erie County. It lies in Western New York at the eastern end of Lake Erie, at the head of the Niagara River on the Canadian border. With a population of 278,349 according to the 2020 census, Buffalo is the second-most populous city in New York State after New York City, and the 81st-most populous city in the U.S. Buffalo is the primary city of the Buffalo–Niagara Falls metropolitan area, which had an estimated population of 1.1 million in 2020, making it the 49th-largest metro area in the U.S. Before the 17th century, the region was inhabited by nomadic Paleo-Indians who were succeeded by the Neutral, Erie, and Iroquois nations. In the early 17th century, the French began to explore the region. In the 18th century, Iroquois land surrounding Buffalo Creek was ceded through the Holland Land Purchase, and a small village was established at its headwaters. In 1825, after its harbor was improved, Buffalo was selected as the terminus of the Erie Canal, which led to its incorporation in 1832. The canal stimulated its growth as the primary inland port between the Great Lakes and the Atlantic Ocean. Transshipment made Buffalo the world's largest grain port of that era. After the coming of railroads greatly reduced the canal's importance, the city became the second-largest railway hub (after Chicago). During the mid-19th century, Buffalo transitioned to manufacturing, which came to be dominated by steel production. Later, deindustrialization and the opening of the St. Lawrence Seaway saw the city's economy decline and diversify. It developed its service industries, such as health care, retail, tourism, logistics, and education, while retaining some manufacturing. In 2019, the gross domestic product of the Buffalo–Niagara Falls MSA was $53 billion (~$ in ).
The city's cultural landmarks include the oldest urban parks system in the United States, the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, the Buffalo History Museum, the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, Shea's Performing Arts Center, the Buffalo Museum of Science, and several annual festivals. Its educational institutions include the University at Buffalo, Buffalo State University, Canisius University, and D'Youville University. Buffalo is also known for its winter weather, Buffalo wings, and two major-league sports teams: the National Football League's Buffalo Bills and the National Hockey League's Buffalo Sabres. History. Pre-Columbian era to European exploration. Before the arrival of Europeans, nomadic Paleo-Indians inhabited the western New York region from the 8th millennium BCE. The Woodland period began around 1000 BC, marked by the rise of the Iroquois Confederacy and the spread of its tribes throughout the state. Seventeenth-century Jesuit missionaries were the first Europeans to visit the area.
Louis Hennepin and Sieur de La Salle explored the upper Niagara and Ontario regions in the late 1670s. In 1679, La Salle's ship, Le Griffon, became the first to sail above Niagara Falls near Cayuga Creek. Baron de Lahontan visited the site of Buffalo in 1687. A small French settlement along Buffalo Creek lasted for only a year (1758). After the French and Indian War, the region was ruled by Britain. After the American Revolution, the Province of New York—now a U.S. state—began westward expansion, looking for arable land by following the Iroquois. New York and Massachusetts were vying for the territory which included Buffalo, and Massachusetts had the right to purchase all but a one-mile-(1600-meter)-wide portion of land. The rights to the Massachusetts territories were sold to Robert Morris in 1791. Despite objections from Seneca chief Red Jacket, Morris brokered a deal between fellow chief Cornplanter and the Dutch dummy corporation Holland Land Company. The Holland Land Purchase gave the Senecas three reservations, and the Holland Land Company received for about thirty-three cents per acre.
Permanent white settlers along the creek were prisoners captured during the Revolutionary War. Early landowners were Iroquois interpreter Captain William Johnston, former enslaved man Joseph "Black Joe" Hodges and Cornelius Winney, a Dutch trader who arrived in 1789. As a result of the war, in which the Iroquois sided with the British Army, Iroquois territory was gradually reduced in the late 1700s by European settlers through successive statewide treaties which included the Treaty of Fort Stanwix (1784) and the First Treaty of Buffalo Creek (1788). The Iroquois were moved onto reservations, including Buffalo Creek. By the end of the 18th century, only of reservations remained. After the Treaty of Big Tree removed Iroquois title to lands west of the Genesee River in 1797, Joseph Ellicott surveyed land at the mouth of Buffalo Creek. In the middle of the village was an intersection of eight streets at present-day Niagara Square. Originally named New Amsterdam, its name was soon changed to Buffalo. Erie Canal, grain and commerce.
The village of Buffalo was named for Buffalo Creek. British military engineer John Montresor referred to "Buffalo Creek" in his 1764 journal, the earliest recorded appearance of the name. A road to Pennsylvania from Buffalo was built in 1802 for migrants traveling to the Connecticut Western Reserve in Ohio. Before an east–west turnpike across the state was completed, traveling from Albany to Buffalo would take a week; a trip from nearby Williamsville to Batavia could take over three days. British forces burned Buffalo and the northwestern village of Black Rock in 1813. The battle and subsequent fire was in response to the destruction of Niagara-on-the-Lake by American forces and other skirmishes during the War of 1812. Rebuilding was swift, completed in 1815. As a remote outpost, village residents hoped that the proposed Erie Canal would bring prosperity to the area. To accomplish this, Buffalo's harbor was expanded with the help of Samuel Wilkeson; it was selected as the canal's terminus over the rival Black Rock. It opened in 1825, ushering in commerce, manufacturing and hydropower. By the following year, the Buffalo Creek Reservation (at the western border of the village) was transferred to Buffalo. Buffalo was incorporated as a city in 1832. During the 1830s, businessman Benjamin Rathbun significantly expanded its business district. The city doubled in size from 1845 to 1855. Almost two-thirds of the city's population was foreign-born, largely a mix of unskilled (or educated) Irish and German Catholics.
Fugitive slaves made their way north to Buffalo during the 1840s. Buffalo was a terminus of the Underground Railroad, with many free Black people crossing the Niagara River to Fort Erie, Ontario; others remained in Buffalo. During this time, Buffalo's port continued to develop. Passenger and commercial traffic expanded, leading to the creation of feeder canals and the expansion of the city's harbor. Unloading grain in Buffalo was a laborious job, and grain handlers working on lake freighters would make $1.50 a day () in a six-day work week. Local inventor Joseph Dart and engineer Robert Dunbar created the grain elevator in 1843, adapting the steam-powered elevator. Dart's Elevator initially processed one thousand bushels per hour, speeding global distribution to consumers. Buffalo was the transshipment hub of the Great Lakes, and weather, maritime and political events in other Great Lakes cities had a direct impact on the city's economy. In addition to grain, Buffalo's primary imports included agricultural products from the Midwest (meat, whiskey, lumber and tobacco), and its exports included leather, ships and iron products. The mid-19th century saw the rise of new manufacturing capabilities, particularly with iron.
By the 1860s, many railroads terminated in Buffalo; they included the Buffalo, Bradford and Pittsburgh Railroad, Buffalo and Erie Railroad, the New York Central Railroad, and the Lehigh Valley Railroad. During this time, Buffalo controlled one-quarter of all shipping traffic on Lake Erie. After the Civil War, canal traffic began to drop as railroads expanded into Buffalo. Unionization began to take hold in the late 19th century, highlighted by the Great Railroad Strike of 1877 and 1892 Buffalo switchmen's strike. Steel, challenges, and the modern era. At the start of the 20th century, Buffalo was the world's leading grain port and a national flour-milling hub. Local mills were among the first to benefit from hydroelectricity generated by the Niagara River. Buffalo hosted the 1901 Pan-American Exposition after the Spanish–American War, showcasing the nation's advances in art, architecture, and electricity. Its centerpiece was the Electric Tower, with over two million light bulbs, but some exhibits were jingoistic and racially charged. At the exposition, President William McKinley was assassinated by anarchist Leon Czolgosz. When McKinley died, Theodore Roosevelt was sworn in at the Wilcox Mansion in Buffalo.
Attorney John Milburn and local industrialists convinced the Lackawanna Iron and Steel Company to relocate from Scranton, Pennsylvania to the town of West Seneca in 1904. Employment was competitive, with many Eastern Europeans and Scrantonians vying for jobs. From the late 19th century to the 1920s, mergers and acquisitions led to distant ownership of local companies; this had a negative effect on the city's economy. Examples include the acquisition of Lackawanna Steel by Bethlehem Steel and, later, the relocation of Curtiss-Wright in the 1940s. The Great Depression saw severe unemployment, especially among the working class. New Deal relief programs operated in full force, and the city became a stronghold of labor unions and the Democratic Party. During World War II, Buffalo regained its manufacturing strength as military contracts enabled the city to manufacture steel, chemicals, aircraft, trucks and ammunition. The 15th-most-populous US city in 1950, Buffalo's economy relied almost entirely on manufacturing; eighty percent of area jobs were in the sector. The city also had over a dozen railway terminals, as railroads remained a significant industry.
The St. Lawrence Seaway was proposed in the 19th century as a faster shipping route to Europe, and later as part of a bi-national hydroelectric project with Canada. Its combination with an expanded Welland Canal led to a grim outlook for Buffalo's economy. After its 1959 opening, the city's port and barge canal became largely irrelevant. Shipbuilding in Buffalo wound down in the 1960s due to reduced waterfront activity, ending an industry which had been part of the city's economy since 1812. Downsizing of the steel mills was attributed to the threat of higher wages and unionization efforts. Racial tensions culminated in riots in 1967. Suburbanization led to the selection of the town of Amherst for the new University at Buffalo campus by 1970. Unwilling to modernize its plant, Bethlehem Steel began cutting thousands of jobs in Lackawanna during the mid-1970s before closing it in 1983. The region lost at least 70,000 jobs between 1970 and 1984. Like much of the Rust Belt, Buffalo has focused on recovering from the effects of late-20th-century deindustrialization.
Geography. Topography. Buffalo is on the eastern end of Lake Erie opposite Fort Erie, Ontario. It is at the head of the Niagara River, which flows north over Niagara Falls into Lake Ontario. The Buffalo metropolitan area is on the Erie/Ontario Lake Plain of the Eastern Great Lakes Lowlands, a narrow plain extending east to Utica, New York. The city is generally flat, except for elevation changes in the University Heights and Fruit Belt neighborhoods. The Southtowns are hillier, leading to the Cattaraugus Hills in the Appalachian Upland. Several types of shale, limestone and lagerstätten are prevalent in Buffalo and its surrounding area, lining their stream beds. According to Fox Weather, Buffalo is one of the top five snowiest large cities in the country, receiving, on average, 95 inches of snow annually. Although the city has not experienced any recent or significant earthquakes, Buffalo is in the Southern Great Lakes Seismic Zone (part of the Great Lakes tectonic zone). Buffalo has four channels within its boundaries: the Niagara River, Buffalo River (and Creek), Scajaquada Creek, and the Black Rock Canal, adjacent to the Niagara River. The city's Bureau of Forestry maintains a database of over seventy thousand trees.
According to the United States Census Bureau, Buffalo has an area of ; is land, and the rest is water. The city's total area is 22.66 percent water. In 2010, its population density was 6,470.6 per square mile. Cityscape. Buffalo's architecture is diverse, with a collection of 19th- and 20th-century buildings. Downtown Buffalo landmarks include Louis Sullivan's Guaranty Building, an early skyscraper; the Ellicott Square Building, once one of the largest of its kind in the world; the Art Deco Buffalo City Hall and the McKinley Monument, and the Electric Tower. Beyond downtown, the Buffalo Central Terminal was built in the Broadway-Fillmore neighborhood in 1929; the Richardson Olmsted Complex, built in 1881, was an insane asylum until its closure in the 1970s. Urban renewal from the 1950s to the 1970s spawned the Brutalist-style Buffalo City Court Building and Seneca One Tower, the city's tallest building. In the city's Parkside neighborhood, the Darwin D. Martin House was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright in his Prairie School style.
Since 2016, Washington DC real estate developer Douglas Jemal has been acquiring, and redeveloping, iconic properties throughout the city. Neighborhoods. According to Mark Goldman, the city has a "tradition of separate and independent settlements". The boundaries of Buffalo's neighborhoods have changed over time. The city is divided into five districts, each containing several neighborhoods, for a total of thirty-five neighborhoods. Main Street divides Buffalo's east and west sides, and the west side was fully developed earlier. This division is seen in architectural styles, street names, neighborhood and district boundaries, demographics, and socioeconomic conditions; Buffalo's West Side is generally more affluent than its East Side. Several neighborhoods in Buffalo have had increased investment since the 1990s, beginning with the Elmwood Village. The 2002 redevelopment of the Larkin Terminal Warehouse led to the creation of Larkinville, home to several mixed-use projects and anchored by corporate offices. Downtown Buffalo and its central business district (CBD) had a 10.6-percent increase in residents from 2010 to 2017, as over 1,061 housing units became available; the Seneca One Tower was redeveloped in 2020. Other revitalized areas include Chandler Street, in the Grant-Amherst neighborhood, and Hertel Avenue in Parkside.
The Buffalo Common Council adopted its Green Code in 2017, replacing zoning regulations which were over sixty years old. Its emphasis on regulations promoting pedestrian safety and mixed land use received an award at the 2019 Congress for the New Urbanism conference. Climate. [[File:Snow removal via frontloader on Cottage Street after December 2019 winter storm, Buffalo, New York - 20191211.jpg\|thumb\|left\|alt=Snowy city streets, seen from above\|Buffalo in winter, 2019]] Buffalo has a [[humid continental climate]] ([[Köppen climate classification\|Köppen]]: [[humid continental climate#Hot summer subtype\|Dfa]]), and temperatures have been [[Climate change in the U.S.\|warming]] with the rest of the US. [[Lake-effect snow]] is characteristic of Buffalo winters, with [[Snowsquall#Frontal snowsquall\|snow bands]] (producing intense snowfall in the city and surrounding area) depending on wind direction off Lake Erie. However, Buffalo is rarely the [[Golden Snowball Award\|snowiest city in the state]]. The [[Blizzard of 1977]] resulted from a combination of high winds and snow which accumulated on land and on the frozen [[Lake Erie]]. Although snow does not typically impair the city's operation, it can cause significant damage in autumn (as the [[Lake Storm Aphid\|October 2006 storm]] did). In November 2014 (called "[[November 13–21, 2014 North American winter storm\|Snowvember]]"), the region had a [[November 13–21, 2014 North American winter storm\|record-breaking storm]] which produced over of snow. Buffalo's lowest recorded temperature was , which occurred twice: on February 9, 1934, and February 2, 1961.
Although the city's summers are drier and sunnier than other cities in the northeastern United States, its vegetation receives enough precipitation to remain hydrated. Buffalo summers are characterized by abundant sunshine, with moderate [[humidity]] and temperatures; the city benefits from cool, southwestern Lake Erie summer breezes which temper warmer temperatures. Temperatures rise above an average of three times a year. No official recording of or more has occurred to date, with a maximum temperature of reached on August 27, 1948. Rainfall is moderate, typically falling at night, and cooler lake temperatures hinder storm development in July. August is usually rainier and [[wikt:muggier\|muggier]], as the warmer lake loses its temperature-controlling ability. Demographics. [[File:Race and ethnicity 2010- Buffalo (5559869161) (cropped).png\|thumb\|left\|alt=See caption\|Racial distribution in Buffalo in 2010: Each dot represents 25 residents. ]] Several hundred Seneca, Tuscarora and other Iroquois tribal peoples were the primary residents of the Buffalo area before 1800, concentrated along Buffalo Creek. After the Revolutionary War, settlers from New England and eastern New York began to move into the area.
From the 1830s to the 1850s, they were joined by Irish and German immigrants from Europe, both peasants and working class, who settled in enclaves on the city's south and east sides. At the turn of the 20th century, Polish immigrants replaced Germans on the East Side, who moved to newer housing; Italian immigrant families settled throughout the city, primarily on the lower West Side. During the 1830s, Buffalo residents were generally intolerant of the small groups of [[African Americans\|Black Americans]] who began settling on the city's East Side. In the 20th century, wartime and manufacturing jobs attracted [[Black Belt in the American South\|Black Americans from the South]] during the [[Great Migration (African American)\|First]] and [[Second Great Migration (African American)\|Second Great Migrations]]. In the World War II and postwar years from 1940 to 1970, the city's Black population rose by 433 percent. They replaced most of the Polish community on the East Side, who were moving out to suburbs. However, the effects of [[redlining]], steering, [[social inequality]], [[blockbusting]], [[white flight]] and other racial policies resulted in the city (and region) becoming one of the most [[Residential segregation in the United States\|segregated]] in the U.S.
During the 1940s and 1950s, [[Puerto Ricans\|Puerto Rican]] migrants arrived en masse, also seeking industrial jobs, settling on the East Side and moving westward. In the 21st century, Buffalo is classified as a [[Majority minority\|majority minority city]], with a plurality of residents who are Black and Latino. Buffalo has experienced effects of [[urban decay]] since the 1970s, and also saw population loss to the suburbs and [[Sun Belt]] states, and experienced job losses from deindustrialization. The city's population peaked at 580,132 in 1950, when Buffalo was the 15th-largest city in the United Statesdown from the eighth-largest city in 1900, after its growth rate slowed during the 1920s. Buffalo finally saw a population gain of 6.5% in the 2020 census, reversing a decades long trend of population decline. The city has 278,349 residents as of the 2020 census, making it the [[List of United States cities by population\|76th-most populous city in the United States]]. Its metropolitan area had 1.1 million residents in 2020, the country's 49th-largest.
[[File:Ethnic Origins in Buffalo, NY.png\|left\|thumb\|235x235px\|Ethnic origins in Buffalo]] Compared to other major US metropolitan areas, the number of foreign-born immigrants to Buffalo is low. New immigrants are primarily resettled refugees (especially from war- or disaster-affected nations) and refugees who had previously settled in other U.S. cities. During the early 2000s, most immigrants came from [[Canadian Americans\|Canada]] and [[Yemeni Americans\|Yemen]]; this shifted in the 2010s to [[Myanmar\|Burmese]] ([[Karen people\|Karen]]) refugees and [[Bangladeshi people\|Bangladeshi]] immigrants. Between 2008 and 2016, Burmese, [[Somali Americans\|Somali]], [[Bhutanese Americans\|Bhutanese]], and [[Iraqi Americans]] were the four largest ethnic immigrant groups in Erie County. A 2008 report noted that although [[food desert]]s were seen in larger cities and not in Buffalo, the city's neighborhoods of color have access only to smaller grocery stores and lack the supermarkets more typical of newer, white neighborhoods. A 2018 report noted that over fifty city blocks on Buffalo's East Side lacked adequate access to a supermarket.
Health disparities exist compared to the rest of [[New York (state)\|the state]]: Erie County's average 2019 lifespan was three years lower (78.4 years); its 17-percent [[Smoking in the United States\|smoking]] and 30-percent [[Obesity in the United States\|obesity]] rates were slightly higher than the state average. According to the Partnership for the Public Good, educational achievement in the city is lower than in the surrounding area; city residents are almost twice as likely as adults in the metropolitan area to lack a high-school diploma. Religion. [[File:Temple Beth Zion 2.jpg\|thumb\|[[Temple Beth Zion (Buffalo, New York)\|Temple Beth Zion]]]] During the early 19th century, [[Seneca mission\|Presbyterian missionaries]] tried to convert the [[Seneca people]] on the Buffalo Creek Reservation to Christianity. Initially resistant, some tribal members set aside their traditions and practices to form their own sect. Later, European immigrants added other faiths. Christianity is the predominant religion in Buffalo and Western New York. [[Catholicism]] (primarily the [[Latin Church]]) has a significant presence in the region, with 161 [[parish]]es and over 570,000 adherents in the [[Diocese of Buffalo]].
A [[Jewish diaspora\|Jewish]] community began developing in the city with immigrants from the mid-1800s; about one thousand [[History of the Jews in Germany\|German]] and [[Lithuanian Jews]] settled in Buffalo before 1880. Buffalo's first [[synagogue]], Temple Beth El, was established in 1847. The city's [[Temple Beth Zion (Buffalo, New York)\|Temple Beth Zion]] is the region's largest synagogue. With changing demographics and an increased number of refugees from other areas on the city's East Side, Islam and Buddhism have expanded their presence. In this area, new residents have converted empty churches into [[mosque]]s and Buddhist temples. Hinduism maintains a small, active presence in the area, including the town of Amherst. A 2016 [[American Bible Society]] survey reported that Buffalo is the fifth-least "Bible-minded" city in the United States; 13 percent of its residents associate with the [[Bible]]. Economy. The Erie Canal was the impetus for Buffalo's economic growth as a transshipment hub for grain and other agricultural products headed east from the Midwest. Later, manufacturing of steel and automotive parts became central to the city's economy. When these industries downsized in the region, Buffalo's economy became service-based. Its primary sectors include health care, business services (banking, accounting, and insurance), retail, tourism and [[logistics]], especially with Canada. Despite the loss of large-scale manufacturing, some manufacturing of metals, chemicals, machinery, food products, and electronics remains in the region. Advanced manufacturing has increased, with an emphasis on [[research and development]] (R&D) and [[automation]]. In 2019, the U.S. [[Bureau of Economic Analysis]] valued the [[gross domestic product]] (GDP) of the Buffalo–Niagara Falls MSA at $53 billion (~$ in ).
The [[civic sector]] is a major source of employment in the Buffalo area, and includes public, non-profit, healthcare and educational institutions. New York State, with over 19,000 employees, is the region's largest employer. In the private sector, top employers include the [[Kaleida Health]] and [[Catholic Health]] [[hospital network]]s and [[M&T Bank]], the sole [[Fortune 500]] company headquartered in the city. Most have been the top employers in the region for several decades. Buffalo is home to the headquarters of [[Rich Products]], [[Delaware North]] and [[New Era Cap Company]]; the [[aerospace]] manufacturer [[Moog Inc.]] and toy maker [[Fisher-Price]] are based in nearby [[East Aurora]]. [[National Fuel Gas]] and [[Life Storage]] are headquartered in [[Williamsville, New York]]. Buffalo weathered the [[Great Recession]] of 2006–09 well in comparison with other U.S. cities, exemplified by increased home prices during this time. The region's economy began to improve in the early 2010s, adding over 25,000 jobs from 2009 to 2017. With [[Buffalo Billion\|state aid]], [[Tesla, Inc.]]'s [[Giga New York]] plant opened in South Buffalo in 2017. The effects of the [[COVID-19 pandemic in the United States]], however, increased the local unemployment rate to 7.5 percent by December 2020. The local unemployment rate had been 4.2 percent in 2019, higher than the national average of 3.5 percent.
Culture. Performing arts and music. [[File:Shea’s Buffalo Theater, Main Street, Buffalo, NY.jpg\|thumb\|right\|[[Shea's Performing Arts Center]]]] Buffalo is home to over 20 theater companies, with many centered in the downtown [[Buffalo Theatre District\|Theatre District]]. [[Shea's Performing Arts Center]] is the city's largest theater. Designed by [[Louis Comfort Tiffany]] and built in 1926, the theater presents [[Broadway theatre\|Broadway musicals]] and concerts. [[Shakespeare in Delaware Park]] has been held outdoors every summer since 1976. [[Stand-up comedy]] can be found throughout the city and is anchored by Helium Comedy Club, which hosts both local talent and national touring acts. The [[Nickel City Opera]] (also known as [[Nickel City Opera\|NC Opera Buffalo]] and [[Nickel City Opera\|NCO]]) is an [[opera company]] based in Buffalo. It was founded in 2004 by [[Valerian Ruminski]]. and operated between 2009 and 2024. The Nickel City Opera\|NCO has collaborated with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra, has commissioned an opera and staged operatic works. Matthias Manasi was music director of Nickel City Opera from 2017 to 2021, his predecessor [[Michael Ching]] was music director of NCO from 2012 to 2017.
[[Shea's Performing Arts Center]] was designed by the well-known [[Chicago]] firm [[Rapp and Rapp]]. The [[opera house]] was modeled in the [[Architectural style\|style]] of European operahouses and decorated in a combination of French and Spanish Baroque and Rococo styles. The [[interior design]] was designed by the [[designer]] and [[artist]] [[Louis Comfort Tiffany]], and many of its elements are still there today. Originally there were nearly 4,000 seats, but in the [[1930s]] the number of seats was reduced to the current number of 3,019 seats last but not least to increase the place for the orchestra by increasing the size of the [[orchestra pit]]. [[File:Kleinhans buffalo.jpg\|thumb\|right\|[[Kleinhans Music Hall]]]] The [[Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra]] was formed in 1935 and performs at [[Kleinhans Music Hall]], whose acoustics have been praised. Although the orchestra nearly disbanded during the late 1990s due to a lack of funding, philanthropic contributions and state aid stabilized it. Under the direction of [[JoAnn Falletta]], the orchestra has received a number of [[Grammy Awards\|Grammy Award]] nominations and won the [[Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition#2000s\|Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Classical Composition]] in 2009.
[[KeyBank Center]] draws national music acts year-round. [[Sahlen Field]] hosts the annual [[WYRK]] Taste of Country music festival every summer with national [[country music]] acts. [[Canalside]] regularly hosts outdoor summer concerts, a tradition that spun off from the defunct [[Thursday at the Square]] concert series. [[Colored Musicians Club]], an extension of what was a separate musicians'-union chapter, maintains jazz history. [[Rick James]] was born and raised in Buffalo and later lived on a ranch in the nearby [[Aurora, Erie County, New York\|Town of Aurora]]. James formed his Stone City Band in Buffalo, and had national appeal with several [[crossover music\|crossover single]]s in the [[Contemporary R&B\|R&B]], [[disco]] and [[funk]] genres in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Around the same time, the [[jazz fusion]] band [[Spyro Gyra]] and jazz [[saxophonist]] [[Grover Washington Jr.]] also got their start in the city. The [[Goo Goo Dolls]], an [[alternative rock]] group which formed in 1986, had 19 top-ten singles. Singer-songwriter and activist [[Ani DiFranco]] has released over 20 folk and [[indie rock]] albums on [[Righteous Babe Records]], her Buffalo-based label.
Underground hip-hop acts in the city partner with Buffalo-based [[Griselda Records]], whose artists include [[Westside Gunn]], [[Conway the Machine]], and [[Benny the Butcher]], who all occasionally refer to Buffalo culture in their lyrics. Cuisine. [[File:Buffalo - Wings at Airport Anchor Bar.jpg\|thumb\|left\|alt=Buffalo wings and celery, with a blue-cheese dip\|Buffalo wings with [[celery]] and blue cheese]] The city's cuisine encompasses a variety of cultures and ethnicities. In 2015, the [[National Geographic Society]] ranked Buffalo third on its "World's Top Ten Food Cities" list. Teressa Bellissimo first prepared [[Buffalo wing]]s (seasoned chicken wings) at the [[Anchor Bar]] in 1964. The Anchor Bar has a crosstown rivalry with [[Duff's Famous Wings]], but Buffalo wings are served at many bars and restaurants throughout the city (some with unique cooking styles and flavor profiles). Buffalo wings are traditionally served with [[blue cheese dressing]] and celery. In 2003, the Anchor Bar received a [[James Beard Foundation Award]] in the America's Classics category.
The Buffalo area has over 600 pizzerias, estimated at more per capita than New York City. Several [[Craft brewery and microbrewery\|craft breweries]] began opening in the 1990s, and the city's [[last call (bar term)\|last call]] is 4 am. Other mainstays of Buffalo cuisine include [[beef on weck]], [[butter lamb]]s, [[kielbasa]], [[pierogi]], [[sponge candy]], chicken finger subs (including the stinger - a version that also includes steak), and the [[Fish and chips\|fish fry]] (popular any time of year, but especially during [[Lent]]). With an influx of refugees and other immigrants to Buffalo, its number of ethnic restaurants (including the West Side Bazaar [[kitchen incubator]]) has increased. Some restaurants use [[food truck]]s to serve customers, and nearly fifty food trucks appeared at Larkin Square in 2019. Museums and tourism. [[File:Albright-Knox Art Gallery 2.jpg\|thumb\|The Albright–Knox Art Gallery, seen from Hoyt Lake in [[Delaware Park–Front Park System\|Delaware Park]]]] Buffalo was ranked the seventh-best city in the United States to visit in 2021 by "[[Travel + Leisure]]", which noted the growth and potential of the city's cultural institutions. The [[Albright–Knox Art Gallery]] is a [[Modern art\|modern]] and [[contemporary art]] museum with a collection of more than 8,000 works, of which only two percent are on display. With a donation from [[Jeffrey Gundlach]], a three-story addition designed by the Dutch architectural firm [[Office for Metropolitan Architecture\|OMA]] opened June 2023 . Across the street, the [[Burchfield Penney Art Center]] contains paintings by [[Charles E. Burchfield]] and is operated by [[Buffalo State College]]. Buffalo is home to the [[Freedom Wall]], a 2017 art installation commemorating civil-rights activists throughout history. Near both museums is the [[Buffalo History Museum]], featuring artwork, literature and exhibits related to the city's history and major events, and the [[Buffalo Museum of Science]] is on the city's East Side.
[[Canalside]], Buffalo's historic business district and harbor, attracts more than 1.5 million visitors annually. It includes the [[Explore & More Children's Museum]], the [[Buffalo and Erie County Naval & Military Park]], [[LECOM Harborcenter]], and a number of shops and restaurants. A restored 1924 carousel (now solar-powered) and a replica boathouse were added to Canalside in 2021. Other city attractions include the Theodore Roosevelt Inaugural National Historic Site, the [[Michigan Street Baptist Church]], [[Buffalo RiverWorks]], [[Seneca Buffalo Creek Casino]], [[Buffalo Transportation Pierce-Arrow Museum]], and the [[Rev. J. Edward Nash Sr. House\|Nash House Museum]]. The [[National Buffalo Wing Festival]] is held every [[Labor Day]] at [[Sahlen Field]]. Since 2002, it has served over 4.8 million Buffalo wings and has had a total attendance of 865,000. The [[Taste of Buffalo]] is a two-day food festival held in July at Niagara Square, attracting 450,000 visitors annually. Other events include the [[Allentown Art Festival]], the Polish-American [[Dyngus Day]], the Elmwood Avenue Festival of the Arts, [[Juneteenth]] in [[Martin Luther King Jr. Park]], the [[World's Largest Disco]] in October and [[Friendship Festival]] in summer, which celebrates Canada-US relations.
Sports. Buffalo has two major professional sports teams: the [[Buffalo Sabres]] ([[National Hockey League]]) and the [[Buffalo Bills]] ([[National Football League]]). The Bills were a founding member of the [[American Football League]] in 1960, and have played at [[Highmark Stadium (New York)\|Highmark Stadium]] in [[Orchard Park, New York\|Orchard Park]] since they moved from [[War Memorial Stadium (Buffalo, New York)\|War Memorial Stadium]] in 1973. They are the only NFL team based in New York State. Before the [[Super Bowl]] era, the Bills won the [[American Football League playoffs\|American Football League Championship]] in 1964 and 1965. With mixed success throughout their history, the Bills had a [[Wide Right (Buffalo Bills)\|close loss]] in Super Bowl XXV and returned to consecutive Super Bowls after the 1991, 1992, and 1993 seasons (losing each time). The Sabres, an [[expansion team]] in 1970, share [[KeyBank Center]] with the [[Buffalo Bandits]] of the [[National Lacrosse League]]. The Bandits are the most decorated of the city's professional teams, with six championships. The Bills, Sabres and Bandits are owned by [[Pegula Sports and Entertainment]].
Several colleges and universities in the area field intercollegiate sports teams; the [[Buffalo Bulls]] and the [[Canisius Golden Griffins]] compete in [[NCAA Division I]]. The Bulls have 16 varsity sports in the [[Mid-American Conference]] (MAC); the Golden Griffins field 15 teams in the [[Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference]] (MAAC), with the men's hockey team part of the [[Atlantic Hockey\|Atlantic Hockey Association]] (AHA). The Bulls participate in the [[NCAA Division I Football Bowl Subdivision\|Football Bowl Subdivision]], the highest level of college football. Buffalo's minor-league teams include the [[Buffalo Bisons]] ([[Triple-A (baseball)\|Triple-A baseball]]), who play at [[Sahlen Field]], and the [[Buffalo eXtreme]] ([[American Basketball Association (2000–present)\|American Basketball Association]]), who play at XGen Elite Sports Complex in [[West Seneca, New York\|West Seneca]]. Parks and recreation. [[File:TifftNaturePreserve.jpg\|thumb\|left\|alt=Boardwalk through a marsh\|[[Tifft Nature Preserve]]]]
The city's Division of Parks and Recreation manages over 180 parks and facilities, seven recreational centers, twenty-one pools and [[splash pad]]s, and three ice rinks. The Delaware Park features the [[Buffalo Zoo]], Hoyt Lake, a golf course, and playing fields. Buffalo collaborated with its sister city [[Kanazawa]] to create the park's Japanese Garden in 1970, where [[cherry blossom]]s bloom in the spring. Opening in 1976, [[Tifft Nature Preserve]] in South Buffalo is on of remediated industrial land. The preserve is an [[Important Bird Area]], including a meadow with trails for hiking and [[cross-country skiing]], [[marsh]]land and fishing. The Olmsted-designed [[Cazenovia Park–South Park System\|Cazenovia and South Park]]s, the latter home to the [[Buffalo and Erie County Botanical Gardens]], are also in South Buffalo. According to [[the Trust for Public Land]], Buffalo's 2022 ParkScore ranking had high marks for access to parks, with 89 percent of city residents living within a ten-minute walk from a park. The city ranked lower in acreage, however; nine percent of city land is devoted to parks, compared with the national median of about fifteen percent.
[[File:Canalside 2.jpg\|thumb\|Looking down [[Canalside]]'s Central Wharf]] Efforts to convert Buffalo's former industrial waterfront into recreational space have attracted national attention, with some writers comparing its appeal to that of Niagara Falls. Redevelopment of the waterfront began in the early 2000s, with the reconstruction of historically aligned canals on the site of the former [[Buffalo Memorial Auditorium]]. [[Placemaking]] initiatives would lead to the area's popularity, rather than permanent buildings and attractions. Under Mayor [[Byron Brown]], [[Canalside]] was cited by the Brookings Institution as an example of waterfront revitalization for other U.S. cities to follow. Summer events have included [[Pedalo\|paddle-boating]] and fitness classes, and the frozen canals permit [[ice skating]], [[curling]], and [[ice cycle\|ice cycling]] in winter. Its success spurred the state to create [[Buffalo Harbor State Park]] in 2014; the park has trails, open recreation areas, bicycle paths and piers. The park's Gallagher Beach, the city's only public beach, has prohibited swimming due to high bacteria levels and other environmental concerns.
The Shoreline Trail passes through Buffalo near the Outer Harbor, Centennial Park, and the Black Rock Canal. The North Buffalo–[[Tonawanda (town), New York\|Tonawanda]] [[rail trail]] begins in Shoshone Park, near the [[LaSalle station (Buffalo Metro Rail)\|LaSalle metro station]] in North Buffalo. Government. [[File:Buffalo City Hall, Interior, thirteenth floor, council chamber.jpg\|thumb\|left\|[[Buffalo Common Council\|Common Council]] Chamber, [[Buffalo City Hall]]]] Buffalo has a [[Strong Mayor\|Strong mayor–council government]]. As the [[Executive (government)\|chief executive]] of city government, the mayor oversees the heads of the city's departments, participates in ceremonies, boards and commissions, and is as the liaison between the city and local cultural institutions. Some agencies, including utilities, urban renewal and [[public housing]], are state- and federally-funded [[New York state public-benefit corporations\|public benefit-corporations]] semi-independent of city government. [[Christopher Scanlon]] has served as acting mayor since 2024, following the resignation of [[Byron Brown]]. No Republican has been mayor of Buffalo since [[Chester A. Kowal]] in 1965.
With its nine districts, the [[Buffalo Common Council]] enacts laws, levies taxes, and approves mayoral appointees and the city budget. Bryan Bollman has been the Common Council president since 2024. Generally reflecting the city's electorate, all nine councilmen are members of the Democratic Party. Buffalo is the [[Erie County, New York\|Erie County]] seat, and is within five of the county's eleven legislative districts. The city is part of the [[Judiciary of New York (state)\|Eighth Judicial District]]. Court cases handled at the city level include [[misdemeanor]]s, violations, housing matters, and claims under $15,000; more severe cases are handled at the county level. Buffalo is represented by members of the [[New York State Assembly]] and [[New York State Senate]]. At the federal level, the city takes up most of and has been represented by Democrat [[Tim Kennedy (politician)\|Tim Kennedy]] since 2024. Federal offices in the city include the Buffalo District of the [[United States Army Corps of Engineers\|United States Army Corps of Engineers']] [[Great Lakes and Ohio River Division]], the [[List of FBI field offices#New York\|Federal Bureau of Investigation]], and the [[United States District Court for the Western District of New York]].
In 2020, the city spent $519 million (~$ in ) on the effects of the [[COVID-19 pandemic in New York (state)\|COVID-19 pandemic]]. The city in 2024 is hampered with a severe [[budget deficit]] attributed to the [[Byron Brown]] administration. Public safety. Buffalo is served by the [[Buffalo Police Department]]. The [[police commissioner]] is Byron Lockwood, who was appointed by Mayor Byron Brown in 2018. Although some criminal activity in the city remains higher than the national average, total crimes have decreased since the 1990s; one reason may be the [[gun buyback program]] implemented by the Brown administration in the mid-2000s. Before this, the city was part of the nationwide [[Crack epidemic in the United States\|crack epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s]] and its accompanying record-high crime levels. In 2018, city police began wearing 300 [[Police body camera\|body cameras]]. A 2021 Partnership for the Public Good report noted that the BPD, which had a 2020–21 budget of about $145.7 million, had an above-average police-to-citizen ratio of 28.9 officers per 10,000 residents in 2020higher than peer cities [[Minneapolis]] and [[Toledo, Ohio]]. The force had a roster of 740 officers during the year, about two-thirds of whom handled emergency requests, road patrol and other non-office assignments. The department has been criticized for [[Police brutality in the United States\|misconduct and brutality]], including the 2004 wrongful termination of officer Cariol Horne for opposing police brutality toward a suspect and a 2020 [[Buffalo police shoving incident\|protest-shoving incident]].
The [[Buffalo Fire Department]] and [[American Medical Response]] (AMR) handle fire-protection and [[emergency medical services]] (EMS) calls in the city. The fire department has about 710 firefighters and thirty-five [[Fire station\|stations]], including twenty-three [[Glossary of firefighting#E\|engine companies]] and twelve [[Glossary of firefighting#L\|ladder companies]]. The department also operates the "[[Edward M. Cotter (fireboat)\|Edward M. Cotter]]", considered the world's oldest active [[fireboat]]. With vacant and abandoned homes prone to [[arson]], [[squatting]], [[Prostitution in the United States\|prostitution]] and other criminal activities, the fire and police department's resources were overburdened before the 2010s. Buffalo ranked second nationwide to [[St. Louis]] for vacant homes per capita in 2007, and the city began a five-year program to demolish five thousand vacant, damaged and abandoned homes. On [[2022 Buffalo shooting\|May 14, 2022, there was a mass shooting]] in a Tops supermarket on the East Side of Buffalo where 13 victims were shot in a racially motivated attack by a [[white supremacist]] who was not a Buffalo native. Ten victims, all of whom were black, were murdered and three were injured.
Media. [[File:The buffalo news building.jpg\|thumb\|left\|"[[The Buffalo News]]" headquarters]] Buffalo's major daily newspaper is "[[The Buffalo News]]." Established in 1880 as the "Buffalo Evening News," the newspaper is estimated to have a daily circulation of 35,000 (down from a high of 310,000). The newspaper announced a pending sale of its building in February 2023, and the relocation of its printing operations to [[Cleveland, Ohio]]. Other newspapers in the Buffalo area include the Black-focused "[[Buffalo Criterion]]" and "Challenger Community News," "The Record" of Buffalo State University, "[[The Spectrum (University at Buffalo)\|The Spectrum]]" of the University at Buffalo, and "[[American City Business Journals\|Buffalo Business First]]." "Investigative Post" is an online [[watchdog journalism\|watchdog]] news organization founded by former "Buffalo News" reporter and [[Pulitzer Prize\|Pulitzer]] nominee Jim Heaney. Eighteen radio stations are licensed in Buffalo, including an FM station at Buffalo State College. Over ninety FM and AM radio signals can be received throughout the city. Eight full-power television outlets serve the city. Major commercial stations include [[WGRZ]] 2 ([[NBC]]), [[WIVB-TV]] 4 ([[CBS]]) and its sister station [[WNLO (TV)\|WNLO]] 23 ([[The CW\|CW]] [[Owned-and-operated station\|O&O]]), [[WKBW-TV]] 7 ([[American Broadcasting Company\|ABC]]), and [[WUTV]] 29 ([[Fox Broadcasting Company\|Fox]], received in parts of Southern Ontario) and its sister station [[WNYO-TV]] 49 ([[MyNetworkTV]]). Buffalo's public television station is [[WNED-TV]] 17 ([[PBS]]); WNED has reported that most of the station's members live in the [[Greater Toronto Area]]. According to [[Nielsen Media Research]], the Buffalo television market was the 51st largest in the United States .
Movies shooting significant footage in Buffalo include "[[Hide in Plain Sight]]" (1980), [[Tuck Everlasting (1981 film)\|"Tuck Everlasting"]] (1981), [[Best Friends (1982 film)\|"Best Friends"]] (1982), [[The Natural (film)\|"The Natural"]] (1984), "[[Vamping]]" (1984), "[[Canadian Bacon]]" (1995), "[[Buffalo '66]]" (1998), [[Manna from Heaven (film)\|"Manna from Heaven"]] (2002), "[[Bruce Almighty]] "(2003), [[The Savages (film)\|"The Savages"]] (2007), Slime City Massacre (2010), "[[Henry's Crime]]" (2011), "[[Sharknado 2: The Second One]]" (2014), "[[Killer Rack]] (2015), [[Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows]]" (2016), "[[Marshall (film)\|Marshall]]" (2016), "[[The American Side]]" (2017), "[[The First Purge]]" (2018), "[[The True Adventures of Wolfboy]]" (2019) and "[[A Quiet Place Part II]]" (2021). Although higher Buffalo production costs led to some films being finished elsewhere, tax credits and other economic incentives have enabled new film studios and production facilities to open. In 2021, several studio projects were in the planning stages.
Education. Primary and secondary education. [[File:City Honors frontview.JPG\|thumb\|alt=Multi-story school building\|[[City Honors School]]]] The [[Buffalo Public Schools]] have about thirty-four thousand students enrolled in their [[Primary education\|primary]] and [[Secondary education\|secondary]] schools. The district administers about sixty [[Public school (government funded)\|public schools]], including thirty-six [[primary school]]s, five [[Middle school\|middle high schools]], fourteen [[Secondary school\|high schools]] and three [[alternative school]]s, with a total of about 3,500 teachers. Its [[board of education]], authorized by the state, has nine elected members who select the superintendent and oversee the budget, curriculum, personnel, and facilities. In 2020, the graduation rate was seventy-six percent. The public [[City Honors School]] was ranked the top high school in the city and 178th nationwide by "[[U.S. News & World Report]]" in 2021. There are twenty [[charter school]]s in Buffalo, with some oversight by the district. The city has over a dozen private schools, including [[Bishop Timon – St. Jude High School]], [[Canisius High School]], [[Mount Mercy Academy (Buffalo, New York)\|Mount Mercy Academy]], and [[Nardin Academy]]—[[Roman Catholic Diocese of Buffalo\|all Roman Catholic]], and [[Darul Uloom Al-Madania]] and Universal School of Buffalo (both Islamic schools); [[nonsectarian]] options include [[Buffalo Seminary]] and the [[Nichols School]].
Colleges and universities. [[File:BuffaloStateOverhead.jpg\|thumb\|left\|The quad at [[Buffalo State College]]]] Founded by [[Millard Fillmore]], the [[University at Buffalo]] (UB) is one of the [[State University of New York]]'s two flagship universities and the state's largest public university. A [[Research I university]], over 32,000 undergraduate, graduate and professional students attend its thirteen schools and colleges. Two of UB's three campuses (the South and Downtown Campuses) are in the city, but most university functions take place at the large North Campus in Amherst. In 2020, "[[U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges Ranking\|U.S. News & World Report]]" ranked UB the 34th-best public university and 88th in national universities. [[Buffalo State College]], founded as a [[normal school]], is one of SUNY's thirteen comprehensive colleges. The city's four-year private institutions include [[Canisius University]], [[D'Youville University]], [[Trocaire College]], and [[Villa Maria College]]. [[SUNY Erie]], the county's two-year public higher-education institution, and the [[Proprietary colleges\|for-profit]] [[Bryant & Stratton College]] have small downtown campuses.
Libraries. [[File:Reading Park, Central Library, Buffalo, New York - 20190907 - 01.jpg\|thumb\|alt=A park with chairs fronting a library in a downtown area\|Reading Park at Buffalo's Central Library]] Established in 1835, Buffalo's main library is the Central Library of the [[Buffalo & Erie County Public Library]] system. Rebuilt in 1964, it contains an auditorium, the original manuscript of the "[[Adventures of Huckleberry Finn]]" (donated by [[Mark Twain]]), and a collection of about two million books. Its Grosvenor Room maintains a special-collections listing of nearly five hundred thousand resources for researchers. A [[pocket park]] funded by [[Southwest Airlines]] opened in 2020, and brought landscaping improvements and seating to Lafayette Square. The system's free library cards are valid at the city's eight branch libraries and at member libraries throughout Erie County. Infrastructure. Healthcare. [[File:Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, New York - 20191009.jpg\|thumb\|[[Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center]]]]
Nine hospitals are operated in the city: [[John R. Oishei Children's Hospital\|Oishei Children's Hospital]] and Buffalo General Medical Center by [[Kaleida Health]], Mercy Hospital and [[Sisters of Charity Hospital (Buffalo)\|Sisters of Charity Hospital]] (Catholic Health), [[Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center]], the county-run [[Erie County Medical Center]] (ECMC), Buffalo VA Medical Center, BryLin (Psychiatric) Hospital and the state-operated Buffalo Psychiatric Center. John R. Oishei Children's Hospital, built in 2017, is adjacent to Buffalo General Medical Center on the [[Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus]] north of downtown; its [[Gates Vascular Institute]] specializes in acute [[stroke recovery]]. The medical campus includes the [[University at Buffalo]] [[Jacobs School of Medicine and Biomedical Sciences]], the [[Hauptman-Woodward Medical Research Institute]] and Roswell Park Comprehensive Cancer Center, ranked the 14th-best cancer-treatment center in the United States by "U.S. News & World Report".
Transportation. [[File:New Flyer Xcelsior CHARGE NG electric bus being road-tested on NFTA Metro route 12, Buffalo, New York - 20230215.jpg\|thumb\|[[Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority]] electric bus in [[Elmwood Village, Buffalo\|Elmwood Village]]]] Growth and changing transportation needs altered Buffalo's [[grid plan]], which was developed by Joseph Ellicott in 1804. His plan laid out streets like the spokes of a wheel, naming them after Dutch landowners and Native American tribes. City streets expanded outward, denser in the west and spreading out east of [[Main Street (Buffalo)\|Main Street]]. Buffalo is a [[List of Canada–United States border crossings\|port of entry with Canada]]; the [[Peace Bridge]] crosses the Niagara River and links the [[Interstate 190 (New York)\|Niagara Thruway]] (I-190) and [[Queen Elizabeth Way]]. I-190, [[New York State Route 5\|NY 5]] and [[New York State Route 33\|NY 33]] are the primary [[Controlled-access highway\|expressway]]s serving the city, carrying a total of over 245,000 vehicles daily.
the [[Peace Bridge]] crosses the Niagara River and links the [[Interstate 190 (New York)\|Niagara Thruway]] (I-190) and [[Queen Elizabeth Way]]. I-190, [[New York State Route 5\|NY 5]] and [[New York State Route 33\|NY 33]] are the primary [[Controlled-access highway\|expressway]]s serving the city, carrying a total of over 245,000 vehicles daily. NY 5 carries traffic to the Southtowns, and NY 33 carries traffic to the eastern suburbs and the Buffalo Airport. The east-west Scajacquada Expressway ([[New York State Route 198\|NY 198]]) bisects Delaware Park, connecting I-190 with the Kensington Expressway (NY 33) on the city's East Side to form a partial [[Ring road\|beltway]] around the city center. The Scajacquada and Kensington Expressways and the Buffalo Skyway (NY 5) have been targeted for [[Freeway removal in the United States\|redesign or removal]]. Other major highways include [[U.S.
The Scajacquada and Kensington Expressways and the Buffalo Skyway (NY 5) have been targeted for [[Freeway removal in the United States\|redesign or removal]]. Other major highways include [[U.S. Buffalo has a higher-than-average percentage of households without a car: 30 percent in 2015, decreasing to 28.2 percent in 2016; the 2016 national average was 8.7 percent. Buffalo averaged 1.03 cars per household in 2016, compared to the national average of 1.8. [[File:AmherstStStation.jpg\|thumb\|alt=Passengers entering a subway train\|Buffalo Metro Rail train at the [[Amherst Street station]]]] The [[Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority]] (NFTA) operates the region's public transit, including its airport, light-rail system, buses, and harbors. The NFTA operates 323 buses on 61 lines throughout Western New York. [[Buffalo Metro Rail]] is a line which runs from Canalside to the [[University Heights, Buffalo\|University Heights]] district. The line's downtown section, south of the [[Fountain Plaza station]], runs at grade and is free of charge. The Buffalo area ranks twenty-third nationwide in transit ridership, with thirty trips per capita per year. [[Proposed expansion of the Buffalo Metro Rail\|Expansions have been proposed]] since Buffalo Metro Rail's inception in the 1980s, with the latest plan (in the late 2010s) reaching the town of Amherst. [[Buffalo Niagara International Airport]] in [[Cheektowaga (town), New York\|Cheektowaga]] has daily scheduled flights by domestic, charter and regional carriers. The airport handled nearly five million passengers in 2019. It received a [[J.D. Power]] award in 2018 for customer satisfaction at a mid-sized airport, and underwent a $50 million expansion in 2020–21. The airport, light rail, small-boat harbor and buses are monitored by the NFTA's [[transit police]].
[[File:ReddyRackBuffalo.jpg\|thumb\|alt=Row of red rental bicycles\|Reddy Bikeshare at [[250 Delaware Avenue]]]] Buffalo has an [[Amtrak]] intercity train station, [[Buffalo–Exchange Street station]], which was rebuilt in 2020. The city's eastern suburbs are served by Amtrak's [[Buffalo–Depew station]] in [[Depew, New York\|Depew]], which was built in 1979. Buffalo was a major stop on through routes between Chicago and New York City through the lower [[Ontario Peninsula]]; trains stopped at [[Buffalo Central Terminal]], which operated from 1929 to 1979. Intercity buses depart and arrive from the NFTA's [[Buffalo Metropolitan Transportation Center\|Metropolitan Transportation Center]] on Ellicott Street. Since Buffalo adopted a [[complete streets]] policy in 2008, efforts have been made to accommodate cyclists and pedestrians into new infrastructure projects. Improved corridors have [[bike lane]]s, and Niagara Street received [[Cycle track\|separate bike lanes]] in 2020. [[Walk Score]] gave Buffalo a "somewhat walkable" rating of 68 out of 100, with Allentown and downtown considered more walkable than other areas of the city.
Utilities. [[File:Albany County DPW vehicles assisting with snow removal in the aftermath of the December 2022 blizzard, Michigan Avenue, Buffalo, New York - 20221228.jpg\|thumb\|Erie County snow removal vehicles in Masten Park neighborhood, following the [[December 2022 North American winter storm\|Blizzard of 2022]]]] Buffalo's water system is operated by [[Veolia Water]], and water treatment begins at the Colonel Francis G. Ward Pumping Station. When it opened in 1915, the station's capacity was second only to Paris. [[Wastewater treatment\|Wastewater]] is treated by the Buffalo Sewer Authority, its coverage extending to the eastern suburbs. [[Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation\|National Grid]] and [[New York State Electric & Gas]] (NYSEG) provide electricity, and [[National Fuel Gas]] provides natural gas. The city's primary telecommunications provider is [[Spectrum (TV service)\|Spectrum]]; [[Verizon Fios]] serves the North Park neighborhood. A 2018 report by [[Ookla]] noted that Buffalo was one of the bottom five U.S. cities in average download speeds at 66 [[megabits per second]].
The city's Department of Public Works manages Buffalo's [[snow removal\|snow]] and trash removal and [[Street cleaner\|street cleaning]]. Snow removal generally operates from November 15 to April 1. A [[snow emergency]] is declared by the National Weather Service after a snowstorm, and the city's roads, major sidewalks and bridges are cleared by over seventy [[snowplow]]s within 24 hours. [[Rock salt]] is the principal agent for preventing snow accumulation and melting ice. Snow removal may coincide with driving bans and parking restrictions. The area along the Outer Harbor is the most dangerous driving area during a snowstorm; when weather conditions dictate, the Buffalo Skyway is closed by the city's police department. To prevent [[ice jam]]s which may impact hydroelectric plants in Niagara Falls, the [[New York Power Authority]] and [[Ontario Power Generation]] began installing an ice [[Boom (containment)\|boom]] annually in 1964. The boom's installation date is temperature-dependent, and it is removed on April 1 unless there is more than of ice remaining on eastern Lake Erie. It stretches from the outer [[breakwall]] at the Buffalo Outer Harbor to the Canadian shore near Fort Erie. Originally made of wood, the boom now consists of steel [[Float (nautical)\|pontoon]]s.
Sister cities. Buffalo has eighteen [[sister city\|sister cities]]: External links. [[Category:Buffalo, New York\| ]] [[Category:1801 establishments in New York (state)]] [[Category:Cities in Erie County, New York]] [[Category:Cities in New York (state)]] [[Category:County seats in New York (state)]] [[Category:Erie Canal]] [[Category:Inland port cities and towns of the United States]] [[Category:New York State Heritage Areas]] [[Category:Populated places established in 1801]] [[Category:New York (state) populated places on Lake Erie]] [[Category:Western New York]]
Benjamin Franklin Benjamin Franklin (April 17, 1790) was an American polymath: a writer, scientist, inventor, statesman, diplomat, printer, publisher and political philosopher. Among the most influential intellectuals of his time, Franklin was one of the Founding Fathers of the United States; a drafter and signer of the Declaration of Independence; and the first postmaster general. Born in the Province of Massachusetts Bay, Franklin became a successful newspaper editor and printer in Philadelphia, the leading city in the colonies, publishing "The Pennsylvania Gazette" at age 23. He became wealthy publishing this and "Poor Richard's Almanack", which he wrote under the pseudonym "Richard Saunders". After 1767, he was associated with the "Pennsylvania Chronicle", a newspaper known for its revolutionary sentiments and criticisms of the policies of the British Parliament and the Crown. He pioneered and was the first president of the Academy and College of Philadelphia, which opened in 1751 and later became the University of Pennsylvania. He organized and was the first secretary of the American Philosophical Society and was elected its president in 1769. He was appointed deputy postmaster-general for the British colonies in 1753, which enabled him to set up the first national communications network.
Franklin was active in community affairs and colonial and state politics, as well as national and international affairs. He became a hero in America when, as an agent in London for several colonies, he spearheaded the repeal of the unpopular Stamp Act by the British Parliament. An accomplished diplomat, he was widely admired as the first U.S. ambassador to France and was a major figure in the development of positive FrancoAmerican relations. His efforts proved vital in securing French aid for the American Revolution. From 1785 to 1788, he served as President of Pennsylvania. At some points in his life, he owned slaves and ran "for sale" ads for slaves in his newspaper, but by the late 1750s, he began arguing against slavery, became an active abolitionist, and promoted the education and integration of African Americans into U.S. society. As a scientist, Franklin's studies of electricity made him a major figure in the American Enlightenment and the history of physics. He also charted and named the Gulf Stream current. His numerous important inventions include the lightning rod, bifocals, glass harmonica and the Franklin stove. He founded many civic organizations, including the Library Company, Philadelphia's first fire department, and the University of Pennsylvania.
Franklin earned the title of "The First American" for his early and indefatigable campaigning for colonial unity. He was the only person to sign the Declaration of Independence, Treaty of Paris, peace with Britain and the Constitution. Foundational in defining the American ethos, Franklin has been called "the most accomplished American of his age and the most influential in inventing the type of society America would become". Franklin's life and legacy of scientific and political achievement, and his status as one of America's most influential Founding Fathers, have seen him honored for more than two centuries after his death on the $100 bill and in the names of warships, many towns and counties, educational institutions and corporations, as well as in numerous cultural references and a portrait in the Oval Office. His more than 30,000 letters and documents have been collected in "The Papers of Benjamin Franklin." Anne Robert Jacques Turgot said of him: "Eripuit fulmen cœlo, mox sceptra tyrannis" ("He snatched lightning from the sky and the scepter from tyrants").
Ancestry. Benjamin Franklin's father, Josiah Franklin, was a tallow chandler, soaper, and candlemaker. Josiah Franklin was born at Ecton, Northamptonshire, England, on December 23, 1657, the son of Thomas Franklin, a blacksmith and farmer, and his wife, Jane White. Benjamin's father and all four of his grandparents were born in England. Josiah Franklin had a total of seventeen children with his two wives. He married his first wife, Anne Child, in about 1677 in Ecton and emigrated with her to Boston in 1683; they had three children before emigration and four after. Following her death, Josiah married Abiah Folger on July 9, 1689, in the Old South Meeting House by Reverend Samuel Willard, and had ten children with her. Benjamin, their eighth child, was Josiah Franklin's fifteenth child overall, and his tenth and final son. Benjamin Franklin's mother, Abiah, was born in Nantucket, Massachusetts Bay Colony, on August 15, 1667, to Peter Folger, a miller and schoolteacher, and his wife, Mary Morrell Folger, a former indentured servant. Mary Folger came from a Puritan family that was among the first Pilgrims to flee to Massachusetts for religious freedom, sailing for Boston in 1635 after King Charles I of England had begun persecuting Puritans. Her father Peter was "the sort of rebel destined to transform colonial America." As clerk of the court, he was arrested on February 10, 1676, and jailed on February 19 for his inability to pay bail. He spent over a year and a half in jail.
Early life and education. Boston. Franklin was born on Milk Street in Boston, Province of Massachusetts Bay on January 17, 1706, and baptized at the Old South Meeting House in Boston. As a child growing up along the Charles River, Franklin recalled that he was "generally the leader among the boys." Franklin's father wanted him to attend school with the clergy but only had enough money to send him to school for two years. He attended Boston Latin School but did not graduate; he continued his education through voracious reading. Although "his parents talked of the church as a career" for Franklin, his schooling ended when he was ten. He worked for his father for a time, and at 12 he became an apprentice to his brother James, a printer, who taught him the printing trade. When Benjamin was 15, James founded "The New-England Courant", which was the third newspaper founded in Boston. When denied the chance to write a letter to the paper for publication, Franklin adopted the pseudonym of "Silence Dogood," a middle-aged widow. Mrs. Dogood's letters were published and became a subject of conversation around town. Neither James nor the "Courant" readers were aware of the ruse, and James was unhappy with Benjamin when he discovered the popular correspondent was his younger brother. Franklin was an advocate of free speech from an early age. When his brother was jailed for three weeks in 1722 for publishing material unflattering to the governor, young Franklin took over the newspaper and had Mrs. Dogood proclaim, quoting "Cato's Letters", "Without freedom of thought there can be no such thing as wisdom and no such thing as public liberty without freedom of speech." Franklin left his apprenticeship without his brother's permission, and in so doing became a fugitive.
Moves to Philadelphia and London. At age 17, Franklin ran away to Philadelphia, seeking a new start in a new city. When he first arrived, he worked in several printing shops there, but he was not satisfied by the immediate prospects in any of these jobs. After a few months, while working in one printing house, Pennsylvania governor Sir William Keith convinced him to go to London, ostensibly to acquire the equipment necessary for establishing another newspaper in Philadelphia. Discovering that Keith's promises of backing a newspaper were empty, he worked as a typesetter in a printer's shop in what is today the Lady Chapel of Church of St Bartholomew-the-Great in the Smithfield area of London, which had at that time been deconsecrated. He returned to Philadelphia in 1726 with the help of Thomas Denham, an English merchant who had emigrated but returned to England, and who employed Franklin as a clerk, shopkeeper, and bookkeeper in his business. Junto and library. In 1727, at age 21, Franklin formed the Junto, a group of "like minded aspiring artisans and tradesmen who hoped to improve themselves while they improved their community." The Junto was a discussion group for issues of the day; it subsequently gave rise to many organizations in Philadelphia. The Junto was modeled after English coffeehouses that Franklin knew well and which had become the center of the spread of Enlightenment ideas in Britain.
Reading was a great pastime of the Junto, but books were rare and expensive. The members created a library, initially assembled from their own books, after Franklin wrote: This did not suffice, however. Franklin conceived the idea of a subscription library, which would pool the funds of the members to buy books for all to read. This was the birth of the Library Company of Philadelphia, whose charter he composed in 1731. Newspaperman. Upon Denham's death, Franklin returned to his former trade. In 1728, he set up a printing house in partnership with Hugh Meredith; the following year he became the publisher of "The Pennsylvania Gazette", a newspaper in Philadelphia. The "Gazette" gave Franklin a forum for agitation about a variety of local reforms and initiatives through printed essays and observations. Over time, his commentary, and his adroit cultivation of a positive image as an industrious and intellectual young man, earned him a great deal of social respect. But even after he achieved fame as a scientist and statesman, he habitually signed his letters with the unpretentious 'B. Franklin, Printer'.
In 1732, he published the first German-language newspaper in America – "Die Philadelphische Zeitung" – although it failed after only one year because four other newly founded German papers quickly dominated the newspaper market. Franklin also printed Moravian religious books in German. He often visited Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, staying at the Moravian Sun Inn. In a 1751 pamphlet on demographic growth and its implications for the Thirteen Colonies, he called the Pennsylvania Germans "Palatine Boors" who could never acquire the "Complexion" of Anglo-American settlers and referred to "Blacks and Tawneys" as weakening the social structure of the colonies. Although he apparently reconsidered shortly thereafter, and the phrases were omitted from all later printings of the pamphlet, his views may have played a role in his political defeat in 1764. According to Ralph Frasca, Franklin promoted the printing press as a device to instruct colonial Americans in moral virtue. Frasca argues he saw this as a service to God, because he understood moral virtue in terms of actions, thus, doing good provides a service to God. Despite his own moral lapses, Franklin saw himself as uniquely qualified to instruct Americans in morality. He tried to influence American moral life through the construction of a printing network based on a chain of partnerships from the Carolinas to New England. He thereby invented the first newspaper chain. It was more than a business venture, for like many publishers he believed that the press had a public-service duty.
When he established himself in Philadelphia, shortly before 1730, the town boasted two "wretched little" news sheets, Andrew Bradford's "The American Weekly Mercury" and Samuel Keimer's "Universal Instructor in all Arts and Sciences, and Pennsylvania Gazette". This instruction in all arts and sciences consisted of weekly extracts from "Chambers's Universal Dictionary". Franklin quickly did away with all of this when he took over the "Instructor" and made it "The Pennsylvania Gazette". The "Gazette" soon became his characteristic organ, which he freely used for satire, for the play of his wit, even for sheer excess of mischief or of fun. From the first, he had a way of adapting his models to his own uses. The series of essays called "The Busy-Body," which he wrote for Bradford's "American Mercury" in 1729, followed the general Addisonian form, already modified to suit homelier conditions. The thrifty Patience, in her busy little shop, complaining of the useless visitors who waste her valuable time, is related to the women who address Mr. Spectator. The Busy-Body himself is a true Censor Morum, as Isaac Bickerstaff had been in the "Tatler". And a number of the fictitious characters, Ridentius, Eugenius, Cato, and Cretico, represent traditional 18th-century classicism. Franklin even used this classical framework for contemporary satire, as seen in the character of Cretico, the "sour Philosopher," who is clearly a caricature of his rival, Samuel Keimer.
Franklin had mixed success in his plan to establish an inter-colonial network of newspapers that would produce a profit for him and disseminate virtue. Over the years he sponsored two dozen printers in Pennsylvania, South Carolina, New York, Connecticut, and even the Caribbean. By 1753, eight of the fifteen English language newspapers in the colonies were published by him or his partners. He began in Charleston, South Carolina, in 1731. After his second editor died, the widow, Elizabeth Timothy, took over and made it a success. She was one of the colonial era's first woman printers. For three decades Franklin maintained a close business relationship with her and her son Peter Timothy, who took over the "South Carolina Gazette" in 1746. The "Gazette" was impartial in political debates, while creating the opportunity for public debate, which encouraged others to challenge authority. Timothy avoided blandness and crude bias and, after 1765, increasingly took a patriotic stand in the growing crisis with Great Britain. Franklin's "Connecticut Gazette" (1755–68), however, proved unsuccessful. As the Revolution approached, political strife slowly tore his network apart.
Freemasonry. In 1730 or 1731, Franklin was initiated into the local Masonic lodge. He became a grand master in 1734, indicating his rapid rise to prominence in Pennsylvania. The same year, he edited and published the first Masonic book in the Americas, a reprint of James Anderson's "Constitutions of the Free-Masons". He was the secretary of St. John's Lodge in Philadelphia from 1735 to 1738. In January 1738, "Franklin appeared as a witness" in a manslaughter trial against two men who killed "a simple-minded apprentice" named Daniel Rees in a fake Masonic initiation gone wrong. One of the men "threw, or accidentally spilled, the burning spirits, and Daniel Rees died of his burns two days later." While Franklin did not directly participate in the hazing that led to Rees' death, he knew of the hazing before it turned fatal, and did nothing to stop it. He was criticized for his inaction in "The American Weekly Mercury", by his publishing rival Andrew Bradford. Ultimately, "Franklin replied in his own defense in the "Gazette"."
Franklin remained a Freemason for the rest of his life. Common-law marriage to Deborah Read. At age 17 in 1723, Franklin proposed to 15-year-old Deborah Read while a boarder in the Read home. At that time, Deborah's mother was wary of allowing her young daughter to marry Franklin, who was on his way to London at Governor Keith's request, and also because of his financial instability. Her own husband had recently died, and she declined Franklin's request to marry her daughter. Franklin travelled to London, and after he failed to communicate as expected with Deborah and her family, they interpreted his long silence as a breaking of his promises. At the urging of her mother, Deborah married a potter named John Rogers on August 5, 1725. John soon fled to Barbados with her dowry in order to avoid debts and prosecution. Since Rogers' fate was unknown, bigamy laws prevented Deborah from remarrying. Franklin returned in 1726 and resumed his courtship of Deborah. They established a common-law marriage on September 1, 1730. They took in his recently acknowledged illegitimate young son and raised him in their household. They had two children together. Their son, Francis Folger Franklin, was born in October 1732 and died of smallpox in 1736. Their daughter, Sarah "Sally" Franklin, was born in 1743 and eventually married Richard Bache.
Deborah's fear of the sea meant that she never accompanied Franklin on any of his extended trips to Europe; another possible reason why they spent much time apart is that he may have blamed her for possibly preventing their son Francis from being inoculated against the disease that subsequently killed him. Deborah wrote to him in November 1769, saying she was ill due to "dissatisfied distress" from his prolonged absence, but he did not return until his business was done. Deborah Read Franklin died of a stroke on December 14, 1774, while Franklin was on an extended mission to Great Britain; he returned in 1775. William Franklin. In 1730, 24-year-old Franklin publicly acknowledged his illegitimate son William and raised him in his household. William was born on February 22, 1730, but his mother's identity is unknown. He was educated in Philadelphia and beginning at about age 30 studied law in London in the early 1760s. William himself fathered an illegitimate son, William Temple Franklin, born on the same day and month: February 22, 1760. The boy's mother was never identified, and he was placed in foster care. In 1762, the elder William Franklin married Elizabeth Downes, daughter of a planter from Barbados, in London. In 1763, he was appointed as the last royal governor of New Jersey.
A Loyalist to the king, William Franklin saw his relations with father Benjamin eventually break down over their differences about the American Revolutionary War, as Benjamin Franklin could never accept William's position. Deposed in 1776 by the revolutionary government of New Jersey, William was placed under house arrest at his home in Perth Amboy for six months. After the Declaration of Independence, he was formally taken into custody by order of the Provincial Congress of New Jersey, an entity which he refused to recognize, regarding it as an "illegal assembly." He was incarcerated in Connecticut for two years, in Wallingford and Middletown, and, after being caught surreptitiously engaging Americans into supporting the Loyalist cause, was held in solitary confinement at Litchfield for eight months. When finally released in a prisoner exchange in 1778, he moved to New York City, which was occupied by the British at the time. While in New York City, he became leader of the Board of Associated Loyalists, a quasi-military organization chartered by King George III and headquartered in New York City. They initiated guerrilla forays into New Jersey, southern Connecticut, and New York counties north of the city. When British troops evacuated from New York, William Franklin left with them and sailed to England. He settled in London, never to return to North America. In the preliminary peace talks in 1782 with Britain, "... Benjamin Franklin insisted that loyalists who had borne arms against the United States would be excluded from this plea (that they be given a general pardon). He was undoubtedly thinking of William Franklin."
Success as an author. In 1732, Franklin began to publish the noted "Poor Richard's Almanack" (with content both original and borrowed) under the pseudonym Richard Saunders, on which much of his popular reputation is based. He frequently wrote under pseudonyms. The first issue published was for the upcoming year, 1733. He had developed a distinct, signature style that was plain, pragmatic and had a sly, soft but self-deprecating tone with declarative sentences. Although it was no secret that he was the author, his Richard Saunders character repeatedly denied it. "Poor Richard's Proverbs," adages from this almanac, such as "A penny saved is twopence dear" (often misquoted as "A penny saved is a penny earned") and "Fish and visitors stink in three days," remain common quotations in the modern world. Wisdom in folk society meant the ability to provide an apt adage for any occasion, and his readers became well prepared. He sold about ten thousand copies per year—it became an institution. In 1741, Franklin began publishing "The General Magazine and Historical Chronicle for all the British Plantations in America." He used the heraldic badge of the Prince of Wales as the cover illustration.
Franklin wrote a letter, "Advice to a Friend on Choosing a Mistress," dated June 25, 1745, in which he gives advice to a young man about channeling sexual urges. Due to its licentious nature, it was not published in collections of his papers during the 19th century. Federal court rulings from the mid-to-late 20th century cited the document as a reason for overturning obscenity laws and against censorship. Public life. Early steps in Pennsylvania. In 1736, Franklin created the Union Fire Company, one of the first volunteer firefighting companies in America. In the same year, he printed a new currency for New Jersey based on innovative anti-counterfeiting techniques he had devised. Throughout his career, he was an advocate for paper money, publishing "A Modest Enquiry into the Nature and Necessity of a Paper Currency" in 1729, and his printer printed money. He was influential in the more restrained and thus successful monetary experiments in the Middle Colonies, which stopped deflation without causing excessive inflation. In 1766, he made a case for paper money to the British House of Commons.
As he matured, Franklin began to concern himself more with public affairs. In 1743, he first devised a scheme for the Academy, Charity School, and College of Philadelphia; however, the person he had in mind to run the academy, Rev. Richard Peters, refused and Franklin put his ideas away until 1749 when he printed his own pamphlet, "Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pensilvania." He was appointed president of the Academy on November 13, 1749; the academy and the charity school opened in 1751. In 1743, he founded the American Philosophical Society to help scientific men discuss their discoveries and theories. He began the electrical research that, along with other scientific inquiries, would occupy him for the rest of his life, in between bouts of politics and moneymaking. During King George's War, Franklin raised a militia called the Association for General Defense because the legislators of the city had decided to take no action to defend Philadelphia "either by erecting fortifications or building Ships of War." He raised money to create earthwork defenses and buy artillery. The largest of these was the "Association Battery" or "Grand Battery" of 50 guns.
In 1747, Franklin (already a very wealthy man) retired from printing and went into other businesses. He formed a partnership with his foreman, David Hall, which provided Franklin with half of the shop's profits for 18 years. This lucrative business arrangement provided leisure time for study, and in a few years he had made many new discoveries. Franklin became involved in Philadelphia politics and rapidly progressed. In October 1748, he was selected as a councilman; in June 1749, he became a justice of the peace for Philadelphia; and in 1751, he was elected to the Pennsylvania Assembly. On August 10, 1753, he was appointed deputy postmaster-general of British North America. His service in domestic politics included reforming the postal system, with mail sent out every week. In 1751, Franklin and Thomas Bond obtained a charter from the Pennsylvania legislature to establish a hospital. Pennsylvania Hospital was the first hospital in the colonies. In 1752, Franklin organized the Philadelphia Contributionship, the Colonies' first homeowner's insurance company.
Between 1750 and 1753, the "educational triumvirate" of Franklin, Samuel Johnson of Stratford, Connecticut, and schoolteacher William Smith built on Franklin's initial scheme and created what Bishop James Madison, president of the College of William & Mary, called a "new-model" plan or style of American college. Franklin solicited, printed in 1752, and promoted an American textbook of moral philosophy by Samuel Johnson, titled "Elementa Philosophica", to be taught in the new colleges. In June 1753, Johnson, Franklin, and Smith met in Stratford. They decided the new-model college would focus on the professions, with classes taught in English instead of Latin, have subject matter experts as professors instead of one tutor leading a class for four years, and there would be no religious test for admission. Johnson went on to found King's College (now Columbia University) in New York City in 1754, while Franklin hired Smith as provost of the College of Philadelphia, which opened in 1755. At its first commencement, on May 17, 1757, seven men graduated; six with a Bachelor of Arts and one with a Master of Arts. It was later merged with the University of the State of Pennsylvania to become the University of Pennsylvania. The college was to become influential in guiding the founding documents of the United States: in the Continental Congress, for example, over one-third of the college-affiliated men who contributed to the Declaration of Independence between September 4, 1774, and July 4, 1776, were affiliated with the college.
In 1754, he headed the Pennsylvania delegation to the Albany Congress. This meeting of several colonies had been requested by the Board of Trade in England to improve relations with the Indians and defense against the French. Franklin proposed a broad Plan of Union for the colonies. While the plan was not adopted, elements of it found their way into the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution. In 1753, Harvard University and Yale awarded him honorary master of arts degrees. In 1756, he was awarded an honorary Master of Arts degree from the College of William & Mary. Later in 1756, Franklin organized the Pennsylvania Militia. He used Tun Tavern as a gathering place to recruit a regiment of soldiers to go into battle against the Native American uprisings that beset the American colonies. Postmaster. Well known as a printer and publisher, Franklin was appointed postmaster of Philadelphia in 1737, holding the office until 1753, when he and publisher William Hunter were named deputy postmasters–general of British North America, the first to hold the office. (Joint appointments were standard at the time, for political reasons.) He was responsible for the British colonies from Pennsylvania north and east, as far as the island of Newfoundland. A post office for local and outgoing mail had been established in Halifax, Nova Scotia, by local stationer Benjamin Leigh, on April 23, 1754, but service was irregular. Franklin opened the first post office to offer regular, monthly mail in Halifax on December 9, 1755. Meantime, Hunter became postal administrator in Williamsburg, Virginia, and oversaw areas south of Annapolis, Maryland. Franklin reorganized the service's accounting system and improved speed of delivery between Philadelphia, New York, and Boston. By 1761, efficiencies led to the first profits for the colonial post office.
When the lands of New France were ceded to the British under the Treaty of Paris in 1763, the British province of Quebec was created among them, and Franklin saw mail service expanded between Montreal, Trois-Rivières, Quebec City, and New York. For the greater part of his appointment, he lived in England (from 1757 to 1762, and again from 1764 to 1774)—about three-quarters of his term. Eventually, his sympathies for the rebel cause in the American Revolution led to his dismissal on January 31, 1774. On July 26, 1775, the Second Continental Congress established the United States Post Office and named Franklin as the first United States postmaster general. He had been a postmaster for decades and was a natural choice for the position. He had just returned from England and was appointed chairman of a Committee of Investigation to establish a postal system. The report of the committee, providing for the appointment of a postmaster general for the 13 American colonies, was considered by the Continental Congress on July 25 and 26. On July 26, 1775, Franklin was appointed postmaster general, the first appointed under the Continental Congress. His apprentice, William Goddard, felt that his ideas were mostly responsible for shaping the postal system and that the appointment should have gone to him, but he graciously conceded it to Franklin, 36 years his senior. Franklin, however, appointed Goddard as Surveyor of the Posts, issued him a signed pass, and directed him to investigate and inspect the various post offices and mail routes as he saw fit. The newly established postal system became the United States Post Office, a system that continues to operate today.
Political work. In 1757, he was sent to England by the Pennsylvania Assembly as a colonial agent to protest against the political influence of the Penn family, the proprietors of the colony. He remained there for five years, striving to end the proprietors' prerogative to overturn legislation from the elected Assembly and their exemption from paying taxes on their land. His lack of influential allies in Whitehall led to the failure of this mission. At this time, many members of the Pennsylvania Assembly were feuding with William Penn's heirs, who controlled the colony as proprietors. After his return to the colony, Franklin led the "anti-proprietary party" in the struggle against the Penn family and was elected Speaker of the Pennsylvania House in May 1764. His call for a change from proprietary to royal government was a rare political miscalculation, however: Pennsylvanians worried that such a move would endanger their political and religious freedoms. Because of these fears and because of political attacks on his character, Franklin lost his seat in the October 1764 Assembly elections. The anti-proprietary party dispatched him to England again to continue the struggle against the Penn family proprietorship. During this trip, events drastically changed the nature of his mission.
In London, Franklin opposed the 1765 Stamp Act. Unable to prevent its passage, he made another political miscalculation and recommended a friend to the post of stamp distributor for Pennsylvania. Pennsylvanians were outraged, believing that he had supported the measure all along, and threatened to destroy his home in Philadelphia. Franklin soon learned of the extent of colonial resistance to the Stamp Act, and he testified during the House of Commons proceedings that led to its repeal. With this, Franklin suddenly emerged as the leading spokesman for American interests in England. He wrote popular essays on behalf of the colonies. Georgia, New Jersey, and Massachusetts also appointed him as their agent to the Crown. During his lengthy missions to London between 1757 and 1775, Franklin lodged in a house on Craven Street, just off the Strand in central London. During his stays there, he developed a close friendship with his landlady, Margaret Stevenson, and her circle of friends and relations, in particular, her daughter Mary, who was more often known as Polly. The house is now a museum known as the Benjamin Franklin House. Whilst in London, Franklin became involved in radical politics. He belonged to a gentlemen's club (which he called "the honest Whigs"), which held stated meetings, and included members such as Richard Price, the minister of Newington Green Unitarian Church who ignited the Revolution controversy, and Andrew Kippis.
Scientific work. In 1756, Franklin had become a member of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce (now the Royal Society of Arts), which had been founded in 1754. After his return to the United States in 1775, he became the Society's Corresponding Member, continuing a close connection. The Royal Society of Arts instituted a Benjamin Franklin Medal in 1956 to commemorate the 250th anniversary of his birth and the 200th anniversary of his membership of the RSA. The study of natural philosophy (referred today as science in general) drew him into overlapping circles of acquaintance. Franklin was, for example, a corresponding member of the Lunar Society of Birmingham. In 1759, the University of St Andrews awarded him an honorary doctorate in recognition of his accomplishments. In October 1759, he was granted Freedom of the Borough of St Andrews. He was also awarded an honorary doctorate by Oxford University in 1762. Because of these honors, he was often addressed as " Franklin." While living in London in 1768, he developed a phonetic alphabet in "A Scheme for a new Alphabet and a Reformed Mode of Spelling". This reformed alphabet discarded six letters he regarded as redundant (c, j, q, w, x, and y), and substituted six new letters for sounds he felt lacked letters of their own. This alphabet never caught on, and he eventually lost interest.
Return to London and Travels in Europe. From the mid-1750s to the mid-1770s, Franklin returned to England and spent much of his time in London., using the city as a base from which to travel. In 1771, he made short journeys through different parts of England, staying with Joseph Priestley at Leeds, Thomas Percival at Manchester and Erasmus Darwin at Lichfield. In Scotland, he spent five days with Lord Kames near Stirling and stayed for three weeks with David Hume in Edinburgh. In 1759, he visited Edinburgh with his son and later reported that he considered his six weeks in Scotland "six weeks of the densest happiness I have met with in any part of my life." In Ireland, he stayed with Lord Hillsborough. Franklin noted of him that "all the plausible behaviour I have described is meant only, by patting and stroking the horse, to make him more patient, while the reins are drawn tighter, and the spurs set deeper into his sides." In Dublin, Franklin was invited to sit with the members of the Irish Parliament rather than in the gallery. He was the first American to receive this honor. While touring Ireland, he was deeply moved by the level of poverty he witnessed. The economy of the Kingdom of Ireland was affected by the same trade regulations and laws that governed the Thirteen Colonies. He feared that the American colonies could eventually come to the same level of poverty if the regulations and laws continued to apply to them.
Franklin spent two months in German lands in 1766, but his connections to the country stretched across a lifetime. He declared a debt of gratitude to German scientist Otto von Guericke for his early studies of electricity. Franklin also co-authored the first treaty of friendship between Prussia and America in 1785. In September 1767, he visited Paris with his usual traveling partner, Sir John Pringle, 1st Baronet. News of his electrical discoveries was widespread in France. His reputation meant that he was introduced to many influential scientists and politicians, and also to King Louis XV. Defending the American cause. One line of argument in Parliament was that Americans should pay a share of the costs of the French and Indian War and therefore taxes should be levied on them. Franklin became the American spokesman in highly publicized testimony in Parliament in 1766. He stated that Americans already contributed heavily to the defense of the Empire. He said local governments had raised, outfitted and paid 25,000 soldiers to fight France—as many as Great Britain itself sent—and spent many millions from American treasuries doing so in the French and Indian War alone.
In 1772, Franklin obtained private letters of Thomas Hutchinson and Andrew Oliver, governor and lieutenant governor of the Province of Massachusetts Bay, proving that they had encouraged the Crown to crack down on Bostonians. Franklin sent them to North America, where they escalated tensions. The letters were finally leaked to the public in the "Boston Gazette" in mid-June 1773, causing a political firestorm in Massachusetts and raising significant questions in England. The British began to regard him as the fomenter of serious trouble. Hopes for a peaceful solution ended as he was systematically ridiculed and humiliated by Solicitor-General Alexander Wedderburn, before the Privy Council on January 29, 1774. He returned to Philadelphia in March 1775, and abandoned his accommodationist stance. In 1773, Franklin published two of his most celebrated pro-American satirical essays: and "" Agent for British and Hellfire Club membership. Franklin is known to have occasionally attended the Hellfire Club's meetings during 1758 as a non-member during his time in England. However, some authors and historians would argue he was in fact a British spy. As there are no records left (having been burned in 1774), many of these members are just assumed or linked by letters sent to each other. One early proponent that Franklin was a member of the Hellfire Club and a double agent is the historian Donald McCormick, who has a history of making controversial claims.
Coming of revolution. In 1763, soon after Franklin returned to Pennsylvania from England for the first time, the western frontier was engulfed in a bitter war known as Pontiac's Rebellion. The Paxton Boys, a group of settlers convinced that the Pennsylvania government was not doing enough to protect them from American Indian raids, murdered a group of peaceful Susquehannock Indians and marched on Philadelphia. Franklin helped to organize a local militia to defend the capital against the mob. He met with the Paxton leaders and persuaded them to disperse. Franklin wrote a scathing attack against the racial prejudice of the Paxton Boys. "If an "Indian" injures me," he asked, "does it follow that I may revenge that injury on all "Indians"?" He provided an early response to British surveillance through his own network of counter-surveillance and manipulation. "He waged a public relations campaign, secured secret aid, played a role in privateering expeditions, and churned out effective and inflammatory propaganda."
Declaration of Independence. By the time Franklin arrived in Philadelphia on May 5, 1775, after his second mission to Great Britain, the American Revolution had begun at the Battles of Lexington and Concord the previous month, on April 19, 1775. The New England militia had forced the main British army to remain inside Boston. The Pennsylvania Assembly unanimously chose Franklin as their delegate to the Second Continental Congress. In June 1776, he was appointed a member of the Committee of Five that drafted the Declaration of Independence. Although he was temporarily disabled by gout and unable to attend most meetings of the committee, he made several "small but important" changes to the draft sent to him by Thomas Jefferson. The "all hang together" saying ascribed to Franklin at the signing is probably apocryphal. He reportedly replied to John Hancock when Hancock stated that they must all hang together, "Yes, we must, indeed, all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately." Carl Van Doren in "Benjamin Franklin’s Autobiographical Writings" writes that the person who said this was most likely Richard Penn, former governor of Pennsylvania, replying to a member of Congress who had said "they must all hang together"... 'If you do not, gentlemen,' said Mr. Penn, '1can tell you that you will be very apt to hang separately.'"
Ambassador to France (1776–1785). On October 26, 1776, Franklin was dispatched to France as commissioner for the United States. He took with him as secretary his 16-year-old grandson, William Temple Franklin. They lived in a home in the Parisian suburb of Passy, donated by Jacques-Donatien Le Ray de Chaumont, who supported the United States. Franklin remained in France until 1785. He conducted the affairs of his country toward the French nation with great success, which included securing a critical military alliance in 1778 and signing the 1783 Treaty of Paris. Among his associates in France was Honoré Gabriel Riqueti, comte de Mirabeau—a French Revolutionary writer, orator and statesman who in 1791 was elected president of the National Assembly. In July 1784, Franklin met with Mirabeau and contributed anonymous materials that the Frenchman used in his first signed work: "Considerations sur l'ordre de Cincinnatus". The publication was critical of the Society of the Cincinnati, established in the United States. Franklin and Mirabeau thought of it as a "noble order," inconsistent with the egalitarian ideals of the new republic.
During his stay in France, he was active as a Freemason, serving as venerable master of the lodge Les Neuf Sœurs from 1779 until 1781. In 1784, when Franz Mesmer began to publicize his theory of "animal magnetism" which was considered offensive by many, Louis XVI appointed a commission to investigate it. These included the chemist Antoine Lavoisier, the physician Joseph-Ignace Guillotin, the astronomer Jean Sylvain Bailly, and Franklin. In doing so, the committee concluded, through blind trials that mesmerism only seemed to work when the subjects expected it, which discredited mesmerism and became the first major demonstration of the placebo effect, which was described at that time as "imagination." In 1781, he was elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Franklin's advocacy for religious tolerance in France contributed to arguments made by French philosophers and politicians that resulted in Louis XVI's signing of the Edict of Versailles in November 1787. This edict effectively nullified the Edict of Fontainebleau, which had denied non-Catholics civil status and the right to openly practice their faith.
Franklin also served as American minister to Sweden, although he never visited that country. He negotiated a treaty that was signed in April 1783. On August 27, 1783, in Paris, he witnessed the world's first hydrogen balloon flight. "Le Globe", created by professor Jacques Charles and Les Frères Robert, was watched by a vast crowd as it rose from the Champ de Mars (now the site of the Eiffel Tower). Franklin became so enthusiastic that he subscribed financially to the next project to build a manned hydrogen balloon. On December 1, 1783, Franklin was seated in the special enclosure for honored guests it took off from the Jardin des Tuileries, piloted by Charles and Nicolas-Louis Robert. Walter Isaacson describes a chess game between Franklin and the Duchess of Bourbon, "who made a move that inadvertently exposed her king. Ignoring the rules of the game, he promptly captured it. 'Ah,' said the duchess, 'we do not take Kings so.' Replied Franklin in a famous quip: 'We do in America. Return to North America. When he returned home in 1785, Franklin occupied a position second only to that of George Washington as the champion of American independence. Le Ray honored him with a commissioned portrait painted by Joseph Duplessis, which now hangs in the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C. After his return, Franklin became an abolitionist and freed his two slaves. He eventually became president of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society.
President of Pennsylvania and Delegate to the Constitutional convention. Special balloting conducted October 18, 1785, unanimously elected him the sixth president of the Supreme Executive Council of Pennsylvania, replacing John Dickinson. The office was practically that of the governor. He held that office for slightly over three years, longer than any other, and served the constitutional limit of three full terms. Shortly after his initial election, he was re-elected to a full term on October 29, 1785, and again in the fall of 1786 and on October 31, 1787. In that capacity, he served as host to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia. He also served as a delegate to the Convention. It was primarily an honorary position and he seldom engaged in debate. According to James McHenry, Elizabeth Willing Powel asked Franklin what kind of government they had wrought. He replied: "A republic, madam, if you can keep it." Death. Franklin suffered from obesity throughout his middle age and elder years, which resulted in multiple health problems, including gout, which worsened as he aged. In poor health during the signing of the U.S. Constitution in 1787, he was rarely seen in public after then until his death.
Franklin died from pleuritic attack at his home in Philadelphia on April 17, 1790, at age 84. His last reported words, conveyed to his daughter, were, "a dying man can do nothing easy," after she suggested that he change position in bed and lie on his side so he could breathe more easily. Franklin's death is described in the book "The Life of Benjamin Franklin", quoting from the account of John Paul Jones: Approximately 20,000 people attended Franklin's funeral, after which he was interred in Christ Church Burial Ground in Philadelphia. Upon learning of his death, the Constitutional Assembly in Revolutionary France entered into a state of mourning for a period of three days, and memorial services were conducted in honor of Franklin throughout the country. In 1728, at age 22, Franklin wrote what he hoped would be his own epitaph: Franklin's actual grave, however, as he specified in his final will, simply reads "Benjamin and Deborah Franklin." Inventions and scientific inquiries. Franklin was a prodigious inventor. Among his many creations were the lightning rod, Franklin stove, bifocal glasses and the flexible urinary catheter. He never patented his inventions; in his autobiography he wrote, "... as we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours; and this we should do freely and generously."
Electricity, light. Franklin was, along with his contemporary Leonhard Euler, the only major scientist who supported Christiaan Huygens's wave theory of light, which was basically ignored by the rest of the scientific community. In the 18th century, Isaac Newton's corpuscular theory was held to be true; it took Thomas Young's well-known slit experiment in 1803 to persuade most scientists to believe Huygens's theory. Franklin started exploring the phenomenon of electricity in the 1740s, after he met the itinerant lecturer Archibald Spencer, who used static electricity in his demonstrations. He proposed that "vitreous" and "resinous" electricity were not different types of "electrical fluid" (as electricity was called then), but the same "fluid" under different pressures. (The same proposal was made independently that same year by William Watson.) He was the first to label them as positive and negative respectively, which replaced the then current distinction made between 'vitreous' and 'resinous' electricity, and he was the first to discover the principle of conservation of charge. In 1748, he constructed a multiple plate capacitor, that he called an "electrical battery" (not a true battery like Volta's pile) by placing eleven panes of glass sandwiched between lead plates, suspended with silk cords and connected by wires.
In pursuit of more pragmatic uses for electricity, remarking in spring 1749 that he felt "chagrin'd a little" that his experiments had heretofore resulted in "Nothing in this Way of Use to Mankind," Franklin planned a practical demonstration. He proposed a dinner party where a turkey was to be killed via electric shock and roasted on an electrical spit. After having prepared several turkeys this way, he noted that "the birds kill'd in this manner eat uncommonly tender." Franklin recounted that in the process of one of these experiments, he was shocked by a pair of Leyden jars, resulting in numbness in his arms that persisted for one evening, noting "I am Ashamed to have been Guilty of so Notorious a Blunder." Franklin briefly investigated electrotherapy, including the use of the electric bath. This work led to the field becoming widely known. In recognition of his work with electricity, he received the Royal Society's Copley Medal in 1753, and in 1756, he became one of the few 18th-century Americans elected a fellow of the Society. The CGS unit of electric charge has been named after him: one "franklin" (Fr) is equal to one statcoulomb.
Franklin advised Harvard University in its acquisition of new electrical laboratory apparatus after the complete loss of its original collection, in a fire that destroyed the original Harvard Hall in 1764. The collection he assembled later became part of the Harvard Collection of Historical Scientific Instruments, now on public display in its Science Center. Kite experiment and lightning rod. Franklin published a proposal for an experiment to prove that lightning is electricity by flying a kite in a storm. On May 10, 1752, Thomas-François Dalibard of France conducted Franklin's experiment using a iron rod instead of a kite, and he extracted electrical sparks from a cloud. On June 15, 1752, Franklin may possibly have conducted his well-known kite experiment in Philadelphia, successfully extracting sparks from a cloud. He described the experiment in his newspaper, "The Pennsylvania Gazette", on October 19, 1752, without mentioning that he himself had performed it. This account was read to the Royal Society on December 21 and printed as such in the "Philosophical Transactions". Joseph Priestley published an account with additional details in his 1767 "History and Present Status of Electricity". Franklin was careful to stand on an insulator, keeping dry under a roof to avoid the danger of electric shock. Others, such as Georg Wilhelm Richmann in Russia, were indeed electrocuted in performing lightning experiments during the months immediately following his experiment.
In his writings, Franklin indicates that he was aware of the dangers and offered alternative ways to demonstrate that lightning was electrical, as shown by his use of the concept of electrical ground. He did not perform this experiment in the way that is often pictured in popular literature, flying the kite and waiting to be struck by lightning, as it would have been dangerous. Instead he used the kite to collect some electric charge from a storm cloud, showing that lightning was electrical. On October 19, 1752, in a letter to England with directions for repeating the experiment, he wrote: Franklin's electrical experiments led to his invention of the lightning rod. He said that conductors with a sharp rather than a smooth point could discharge silently and at a far greater distance. He surmised that this could help protect buildings from lightning by attaching "upright Rods of Iron, made sharp as a Needle and gilt to prevent Rusting, and from the Foot of those Rods a Wire down the outside of the Building into the Ground; ... Would not these pointed Rods probably draw the Electrical Fire silently out of a Cloud before it came nigh enough to strike, and thereby secure us from that most sudden and terrible Mischief!" Following a series of experiments on Franklin's own house, lightning rods were installed on the Academy of Philadelphia (later the University of Pennsylvania) and the Pennsylvania State House (later Independence Hall) in 1752.
Though Franklin is famously associated with kites from his lightning experiments, he has also been noted by many for using kites to pull humans and ships across waterways. George Pocock in the book "A Treatise on The Aeropleustic Art, or Navigation in the Air, by means of Kites, or Buoyant Sails" noted being inspired by Benjamin Franklin's traction of his body by kite power across a waterway. Thermodynamics. Franklin noted a principle of refrigeration by observing that on a very hot day, he stayed cooler in a wet shirt in a breeze than he did in a dry one. To understand this phenomenon more clearly, he conducted experiments. In 1758 on a warm day in Cambridge, England, he and fellow scientist John Hadley experimented by continually wetting the ball of a mercury thermometer with ether and using bellows to evaporate the ether. With each subsequent evaporation, the thermometer read a lower temperature, eventually reaching . Another thermometer showed that the room temperature was constant at . In his letter "Cooling by Evaporation", Franklin noted that, "One may see the possibility of freezing a man to death on a warm summer's day."

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