Editing Benjamin Franklin (section)

===Oceanography and hydrodynamics===
[[File:Franklin-Folger Gulf Stream chart, London, 1769 version, LOC.jpg|thumb|The first Franklin-Folger chart of the Gulf Stream printed in London in 1769]]
As deputy postmaster, Franklin became interested in [[Atlantic Ocean|North Atlantic Ocean]] circulation patterns. While in England in 1768, he heard a complaint from the Colonial Board of Customs. British packet ships carrying mail had taken several weeks longer to reach New York than it took an average merchant ship to reach [[Newport, Rhode Island]]. The merchantmen had a longer and more complex voyage because they left from London, while the packets left from [[Falmouth, Cornwall|Falmouth]] in Cornwall.<ref name="Tuchman 1988 p. 221-222">{{cite book | last=Tuchman | first=Barbara Wertheim | title=The First Salute | publisher=Knopf Publishing Group | date=1988 | isbn=0-394-55333-0 | pages=221–222}}</ref> Franklin put the question to his cousin Timothy Folger, a [[Nantucket]] whaler captain, who told him that merchant ships routinely avoided a strong eastbound mid-ocean current. The mail packet captains sailed dead into it, thus fighting an adverse current of {{convert|3|mph|km/h|0}}. Franklin worked with Folger and other experienced ship captains, learning enough to chart the current and name it the [[Gulf Stream]], by which it is still known today.<ref>{{cite web|author=Anon|title=1785: Benjamin Franklin's 'Sundry Maritime Observations'|url=http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/library/readings/gulf/gulf.html|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20051218185445/http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/library/readings/gulf/gulf.html|archive-date=December 18, 2005|access-date=July 15, 2010|work=Ocean Explorer: Readings for ocean explorers|publisher=NOAA Office of Ocean Exploration and Research}}</ref>

Franklin published his Gulf Stream chart in 1770 in England, where it was ignored. Subsequent versions were printed in France in 1778 and the U.S. in 1786. The British original edition of the chart had been so thoroughly ignored that everyone assumed it was lost forever until Phil Richardson, a [[Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution|Woods Hole oceanographer]] and Gulf Stream expert, discovered it in the [[Bibliothèque nationale de France|Bibliothèque Nationale]] in Paris in 1980.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Richardson |first1=Philip L. |title=Benjamin Franklin and Timothy Folger's First Printed Chart of the Gulf Stream |journal=Science |date=8 February 1980 |volume=207 |issue=4431 |pages=643–645 |doi=10.1126/science.207.4431.643|bibcode=1980Sci...207..643R }}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|last=Wood |first=Anthony R. |title=How Franklin's chart resurfaced|url=https://www.inquirer.com/philly/news/special_packages/inquirer/How_Franklin_s_chart_resurfaced.html|access-date=December 30, 2022|website=www.inquirer.com|date=March 29, 2007 |language=en}}</ref> This find received front-page coverage in ''[[The New York Times]]''.<ref>{{cite news |last1=Wilford |first1=John Noble |title=Prints of Franklin's Chart of Gulf Stream Found |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1980/02/06/archives/prints-of-franklins-chart-of-gulf-stream-found-a-good-summary-gulf.html |access-date=2 May 2025 |work=The New York Times |date=6 February 1980 |pages=A1, B7}}</ref> It took many years for British sea captains to adopt Franklin's advice on navigating the current; once they did, they were able to trim two weeks from their sailing time.<ref>1785: Benjamin Franklin's "Sundry Maritime Observations,"
 The Academy of Natural Sciences, April 1939&nbsp;m</ref><ref>[http://www.oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/library/readings/gulf/gulf.html ''1785: Benjamin Franklin's 'Sundry Maritime Observations' ''.] {{webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20081002000344/http://www.oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/library/readings/gulf/gulf.html |date=October 2, 2008 }} NOAA Ocean Explorer.</ref> In 1853, the oceanographer and cartographer [[Matthew Fontaine Maury]] noted that while Franklin charted and codified the Gulf Stream, he did not discover it:

{{blockquote|Though it was Dr. Franklin and Captain Tim Folger, who first turned the Gulf Stream to nautical account, the discovery that there was a Gulf Stream cannot be said to belong to either of them, for its existence was known to [[Peter Martyr d'Anghiera]], and to [[Sir Humphrey Gilbert]], in the 16th century.<ref>Source: ''Explanations and Sailing Directions to Accompany the Wind and Current Charts'', 1853, p. 53, by [[Matthew Fontaine Maury]].</ref>}}

[[File:Franklin 1786 Sundry Maritime Observations.png|thumb|An illustration from Franklin's "Sundry Maritime Observations"]]
An aging Franklin accumulated all his oceanographic findings in ''Maritime Observations'', published by the Philosophical Society's ''transactions'' in 1786.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Price|first1=Richard|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fPQfNx2TQLAC&pg=RA1-PA23|title=The Correspondence of Richard Price: February 1786 – February 1791|last2=Thomas|first2=David Oswald|last3=Peach|first3=Bernard|publisher=Duke University Press|year=1994|isbn=978-0-8223-1327-4|page=23|author-link1=Richard Price|author-link2=David Oswald Thomas|access-date=October 2, 2009}}</ref> It contained ideas for [[sea anchor]]s, [[catamaran]] hulls, [[watertight compartment]]s, shipboard lightning rods and a soup bowl designed to stay stable in stormy weather.

While traveling on a ship, Franklin had observed that the wake of a ship [[storm oil|was diminished]] when the cooks scuttled their greasy water. He studied the effects on a large pond in [[Clapham Common]], London. "I fetched out a cruet of oil and dropt a little of it on the water&nbsp;... though not more than a teaspoon full, produced an instant calm over a space of several yards square." He later used the trick to "calm the waters" by carrying "a little oil in the hollow joint of [his] cane."<ref>* W. Gratzer, Eurekas and Euphorias, pp. 80–81.</ref>