Tag Archives: Timothy Folger
Benjamin Franklin Was the First to Chart the Gulf Stream
Benjamin Franklin is known for shaping the Constitution, writing letters as a woman, chowing down on native foods and hosting an anatomy school in his home. What doesn’t often get mentioned is that he was also the first to chart the Gulf Stream. He completed the first scientific study of the current on this day in 1775, according to Today in Science History.,, In true Franklin fashion, he came to study the Gulf Stream because of a question, writes Laura Bliss for City Lab. It was 1768, when he was working in London as deputy postmaster general for mail to and from the American colonies. Franklin was talking to his cousin, Timothy Folger, who was the captain of a merchant ship. He asked why it took ships like Folger’s so much less time to reach America than it took official mail ships. “It struck Folger that the British mail captains must not know about the Gulf Stream, with which he had become well-acquainted in his earlier years as a Nantucket whaler,” writes Bliss. Folger told Franklin that whalers knew about the “warm, strong current”and used it to help their ships track and kill whales. click here to read the article 14:03
