Page 81 - Celebrating 50 Years of the International swimming Hall of Fame

BEN FRANKLIN

THE SWIMMER

How swimming helped create the greatest
research scientist of the Eighteenth Century.
By Bruce Wigo

Does everyone recognize a minor modification I’ve made to this famous painting
by Benjamin West? It provides the answer to a question that has puzzled historians
and scientists alike for almost 300 years. How could a man, whose formal education
ended at the age of ten, become “the most important international scientist of the mid
and late eighteenth century”, “the foremost experimental physicist of his age,” “the
Newton of electricity” and “one of the most influential scientists who have lived since
Copernicus was born in 1473?”

The question is important because as Harvard historian and Franklin biographer
Joyce Chaplin has said, “Famous and Fascinating Benjamin as Franklin is, he would be
remembered as neither without his accomplishments as a scientist.” Walter Isaacson
agrees - saying that when Franklin “arrived in England in 1757 and again in 1764, or
in France in 1776, “he was not merely a representative of some provincial group, but a well-known figure with a commanding
international reputation as a scientist. When Lord Chatham referred to Franklin’s political ideas in parliamentary debate, he
compared him to ‘our Boyle’ and ‘our Newton.’”

In this article I’m going to give you the answer…. and it has been hiding in plain sight for as long as the question has been
asked…… The answer is……. drum roll please…..swimming! Well, not just swimming - but a little illustrated book about
swimming ostensibly written by Frenchman, Melchisédech (pronouced “Mel - chiz - a - deck”) Thévenot.

A book that Franklin tells us in his biography that he studied in great detail while still a
child until he mastered all of it’s 40 positions and motions. Some of which are difficult even
for experienced competitive swimmers of today. Yet, I doubt any biographer of Franklin
has ever read Thévenot. For if they had, they would not have dismissed it as simply“a little
illustrated book on swimming by a certain Thévenot.” For this book was in fact, a scientific
treatise on the physics and fluid dynamic principles of swimming - and Thévenot was one
of the great scientific figures of the enlightenment. I’m sure all of you have either seen or
used one of his ingenious inventions…. the bubble level… the tool that helps a wide variety
of tradesmen determine whether a line is level or plumb.

Historians have paid little attention to Thévenot and generally agree with I. Bernard
Cohen, the foremost authority on Franklin’s scientific work, who declared that “we have no
Idea of just when Franklin began to hear about science.” COHEN “assumed”, like virtually
every other biographer, that Franklin’s “scientific personality” first surfaced in the the mid-
1740s, when he was middle-aged and had retired from the printing business. THAT’S
what I thought too, until I read the biographies of Elon Musk and Taylor Wilson - You all
know Musk, but how many have heard of Wilson? What struck me like lightning as I was
reading about them was how similar their curious minds, that focus on self-improvement
and accomplishments, are to our Benjamin Franklin. These two have been recognized as
prodigies, while Franklin has never been considered as one. That’s because by definition:
“A a prodigy is child younger than 10 years old, who performs at the level of a highly trained adult in a very demanding field
of endeavor. He or she tends to be extremely focused on one single thing, has the talent to really do it well and finds his or her
challenges and satisfaction through it.”

Musk and Wilson mastered the principles of rocket science and propulsion by the age of ten. Musk then went on to master
computer programming while Wilson created nuclear fusion in his garage at the age of 14. It is my contention that Franklin was
a prodigy and that the demanding field of endeavor he mastered before the age of 10 was swimming.

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