The art of printing from movable type, beginning with Gutenberg about 1450, helped to further the Renaissance.

The improved mariner's compass enabled Columbus to find the New world; gunpowder made possible its conquest.
The compound microscope and the first practical telescope came from the spectacle makers of Middelburg, Holland, the former about 1590 and the latter about 1608.

Harvey, an English physician, had discovered the circulation of the blood in 1628, and Newton, an English mathematician, the law of gravitation in 1685.
If Franklin's desire to continue his scientific researches had been gratified, it is possible that he might have discovered some of the secrets for which the world waited until Edison and his contemporaries revealed them more than a century later.

Franklin's scientific reputation has grown with the years, and some of his views seem in perfect accord with the latest developments in electricity.

But he was not to be permitted to continue his experiments.