This is People Of Science, take one.
Bill Bryson, Sir, everybody knows of you, thinks of you, as an author,
but what's your connection with the Royal Society?
Well, a few years ago, I was invited to be an honorary fellow and,
I have to say, it was probably the biggest compliment ever paid to me.
You've chosen Benjamin Franklin FRS,
which perhaps many people don't know - Fellow of the Royal Society.
One of the things you're not taught much about Franklin
when you're growing up in America is about his scientific interest.
But he was a Fellow of the Royal Society
some 20 years before he became famous for all the other things
that he became famous for in terms of the American Revolution.
I suppose most people associate Franklin's science with lightning,
but there's plenty of other stuff.
There's quite a long list, actually, isn't there?
I mean, he was a quintessential American in the sense of being
very interested in practical applications,
and so he invented quite a lot of useful things -
bifocals, most famously, but also the lightning rod,
which probably was his most valuable gift to posterity because,
I mean, thanks to the lightning rod,
an awful lot of wonderful buildings -
old cathedrals and steeples - everywhere have been saved.
When you list Franklin, trying to describe...
I mean, here, he's described as a leading author, printer,
political theorist, politician, Freemason, postmaster,
scientist, inventor, civic activist, statesman and diplomat! Yeah.
It was the perfect time to be Benjamin Franklin or
anyone like him because, I mean, it was, you know,
the Age of Enlightenment, it was one of the last periods in which
people could be into everything.
He was able to lead an incredibly diverse
and active life in lots and lots and lots of different fields
in a way that I don't think anyone could do now.
Now, we have some manuscripts of his to look at.
It always strikes me - this beautiful writing.
It's absolutely compelling, actually, isn't it?
I want to read it now cos it's very precisely exactly
what he did with how much...
the jars that he used as batteries, presumably, and how he did it.
I think one of the problems that we get is that the scientists
don't always seem like people, like human beings, with desires
and petty grievances and frailties, and you just think of them
as these giant brains who are churning out knowledge somehow.
And I think seeing these things - it's like time travel.
You are taken right there to that person.
Did he spend much time in England?
Franklin spent a lot of time in England.
I mean, one of the things he spent the most time doing
was representing some of the colonies and, really,
during the 15 or 20 years running up to the American Revolution,
he was sort of the voice of America in Britain.
A very interesting sideline about Franklin was that,
after America triumphed in the War of Independence
and was setting up a government,
they didn't know what to call the new national leader, and Franklin
is said to have suggested the name President
because that was the title of the head of the Royal Society in London.
So it's entirely possible that the Chief of State of
the United States is called President because of the Royal Society.
And scientifically, I suppose, he's most famous for his work
on lightning, electricity and the famous kite experiment.
For a time, he was probably the foremost authority
in the world on electricity.
Before him, electricity was seen almost as a kind of parlour game,
you know, that you could rub a glass rod with a cloth
and use it to pick up bits of fluff.
So people played with electricity and they knew that it was
an interesting phenomenon, but they didn't really understand it.
Franklin's contribution was to realise that it was a fundamental
force of nature, like gravity, and that it was really important.
So, in that way, his contribution to the world's knowledge was profound.