By Kurt Vidmer<\/a><\/span> <\/p>\n

The Article \u201cAnalysis of noise sources in colonial Philadelphia\u201d by Boren and Roginska gives a very intriguing insight into the a non direct interaction between two historical figures: Benjamin Franklin and George Whitefield.<\/p>\n

The the article describes how \u201cWhitefield could be heard by more than 30,000 listeners\u201d (Boren and Roginska, 1) using nothing more than his natural voice. As the most significant and influential figure and preacher in the First Great Awakening, he was thought to posses somewhat of an \u201cabove human\u201d presence, leading us to believe that this claim of his voice being able to reach 30,000 people to be somewhat of an embellished claim.<\/p>\n

However, this article divulges into Benjamin Franklins experiment taken during a Whitefield speech in Franklin’s home city of Philadelphia. Franklin used basic geometry to attempt to form an educated estimate as to the potential number of people that Whitefield’s voice was capable of reaching, eventually reaching the conclusion that his voice was capable of reaching over 30,000 people in philadelphia.<\/p>\n

The article breaks down his mathematical reasoning, and uses formulas and knowledge of the historical context of 18th century Philadelphia to either validate or refute his conclusion, I believe eventually coming to the conclusion that more first hand knowledge of different factors was needed to make a decisive conclusion.<\/p>\n

Although I could not follow all of the mathematical reasonings behind the research, it was very interesting to analyze how Benjamin Franklin worked to research the capabilities of Whitefield’s voice. Having one of the most famous early Americans conduct an experiment on the most famous Great Awakening preacher gives us insight as to the communication networks of the 18th century, showing how notable people kept tabs on each other.<\/p>\n

In my classmates blog, \u201cTo be Frank about Franklin\u201d, it is argued that Franklin’s impact on literature may not be as been as crucial as it is made out, as she says, \u201cit could be argued that such political unrest would have caused an increase in calls for public opinion literature, Franklin or no Franklin\u201d. However, I would argue that this article is a prime example of Franklin’s impact beyond the printing press. His roll as an innovator, newspaper pioneer, and statesmen are only a few roles in which Benjamin Franklin greatly impacted the shaping of early day America.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

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By Kurt Vidmer The Article \u201cAnalysis of noise sources in colonial Philadelphia\u201d by Boren and Roginska gives a very intriguing insight into the a non direct interaction between two historical figures: Benjamin Franklin and George Whitefield. The the article describes how \u201cWhitefield could be heard by more than 30,000 listeners\u201d (Boren and Roginska, 1) using […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-private","post-preview"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1278"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1278\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/courses.shroutdocs.org\/his245\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}