These few words cannot be expected to do justice to a man who led, by any standards, a full and varied life. Indeed, in these days of specialization it is difficult to take seriously a man whose life encompassed meetings at the American Philosophical Society (which he founded), debates in the Pennsylvania legislature, investigations into the nature of electricity, representing the interests of the Colonists to the English Parliament, negotiating the Treaty of Paris, and many inventions, physical and social, that are still apparent today.

--Wayne Wilson