Why Did Ben Franklin Invent The Odometer ?
Benjamin Franklin was born in 1706 in Boston. He was a very inquisitive personality and an avid reader but his family could not educate him in school after the age of ten. |
He is an inspiring self taught multifaceted personality. He was a renowned author for his witty and satirical articles. In addition, he was also a scientist, inventor, activist, politician, diplomat and a statesman.
Franklin is considered as one of the ‘practical inventors’ in history. His inventions were designed to improve and solve daily comfort issues. His famous inventions include Armonica, Franklin Stove, Lightning Rod, Bifocals, Map of Gulf Stream, Daylight Savings Time and Odometer. The most surprising fact is that he did not patent any of his inventions as he believed in freely sharing his inventions with people and create a more comfortable life.
Franklin was serving as a Postmaster General and was responsible for developing the postal system at that time in various colonies. He was trying to invent ways of finding the most efficient postal routes and wanted to come up with some method to measure distances between certain points for providing efficient service and speedy delivery. He decided to analyze the best routes to deliver the mail in the shortest possible time.
For this purpose, he invented the odometer. It contains certain number of wheels and by counting their rotation, the distance traveled between two points can be deduced. This device is attached to a carriage and measures mileage of the routes and indicates both the distance and the speed. Now you know why Ben Franklin invented the odometer.
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