Question 1

True or false: Franklin invented bifocals by cutting two pairs of glasses in half and combining them.

Accepted Answer

True. He grew tired of switching between reading and distance glasses, so he split lenses and fused them.

Question 2

True or false: Benjamin Franklin never held elected office at the national level.

Accepted Answer

False. He served as a delegate to the Second Continental Congress and was a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

Question 3

True or false: Franklin was the first American to publish a novel in the colonies.

Accepted Answer

False. He never wrote a novel; his major literary works were Poor Richard's Almanack and his autobiography.

Question 4

True or false: Benjamin Franklin invented the lightning rod after flying a kite in a thunderstorm.

Accepted Answer

True. Franklin did invent the lightning rod, and his famous kite experiment in 1752 proved lightning is electrical.

Question 5

True or false: Franklin served as U.S. ambassador to France before the American Revolution ended.

Accepted Answer

False. He was a diplomat in France from 1776, but the U.S. didn't exist as a nation until 1783; he was a commissioner, not an ambassador.

Question 6

True or false: Franklin was the first U.S. Postmaster General under the Constitution.

Accepted Answer

False. He was Postmaster General under the Continental Congress, not the Constitution; that role came later.

Question 7

True or false: Franklin owned slaves for most of his life and only freed them late in old age.

Accepted Answer

True. He owned slaves for decades, but later became an abolitionist and freed his own slaves.

Question 8

True or false: Franklin proposed using daylight saving time to conserve candles in 1784.

Accepted Answer

True. In a satirical letter, he suggested Parisians wake earlier to save candle wax—a precursor to DST.

Benjamin Franklin Trivia Questions