Benjamin Franklin: A Film by Ken Burns

A new four-hour documentary series about Benjamin Franklin by Ken Burns will premiere on PBS on April 4th. Here’s the trailer and a slightly longer, less formal teaser from Burns:

Ken Burns’s two-part, four-hour documentary, Benjamin Franklin, explores the revolutionary life of one of the 18th century’s most consequential and compelling personalities, whose work and words unlocked the mystery of electricity and helped create the United States. Franklin’s 84 years (1706-1790) spanned an epoch of momentous change in science, technology, literature, politics, and government — fields he himself advanced through a lifelong commitment to societal and self-improvement.

Also available to watch while we wait for the series is this 6-minute extended scene about Franklin, smallpox, and his son Frankie.

For more reading on the history of smallpox inoculation and its introduction to America by an enslaved African man named Onesimus, check out these two articles. (via @CharlesCMann)

• Benjamin Franklin
• Ken Burns
• PBS
• TV
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