Makey stood outside the East Bay Makers Club for its grand opening. The West Berkeley makerspace is located in a storefront that used to be a bike shop.

The two co-founders of EBMC are John Boiles and Joe Taylor, both of whom are very interesting makers with day jobs in the tech industry. John said he and I talked about 15 years ago when he was with Waterloo Labs and developed a way to use an iPhone as a remote control for an Oldsmobile. John said to roomful of people that he hopes that “East Bay Makers Club encourages more people to build things because building things is awesome.” Joe loves restoring and building pinball machines and has two of them in a back room at EBMC. He hopes to give a workshop on constructing your own pinball machine.

Given that it was July 3rd, and America’s 250th birthday, I chose to talk about Ben Franklin as the inspiration for shared spaces and sharing our creations and inventions with others.

“Hanging together” might be a good, simple definition of community. But here Franklin meant not only being together but staying together while facing adversity, requiring a commitment from each other to support the collective effort. I want to talk about two achievements of Ben Franklin that I think are especially relevant to us today.

In 1731, Ben Franklin opened the first lending library in Philadelphia. He was 26 years old. He was part of a group of people that called themselves the Junto and who got together regularly to talk and share ideas.  They met first at a pub and then at one of their homes. They wanted to have a library of books to be able to answer questions and resolve disputes. Books were expensive and the rich had private libraries of their own. Franklin imagined having a library, where books could be shared by members and provide a way of learning.  

It’s not unlike how I understand that East Bay Makers Club got started, with its co-founders, John and Joe, meeting every other Friday night at John’s house for Build night. They began inviting others to join them and soon had the idea that they could expand the group if they had the right kind of space.

Franklin’s Library Company started as a subscription model. He organized an initial meeting — a bit like the grand opening here — and his goal was to sign up subscribers. Franklin said that he was disappointed to have only eleven people sign up.  

In his Autobiography, he wrote: “So few were the readers at that time in Philadelphia, and the majority of us so poor, that I was not able, with great industry to find more than 50 persons, mostly young tradesman, willing to pay.”  He added: “On this little fund we began.” The 50 members paid 40 shillings to join and ten shillings a year.  It grew to become one of the five best libraries in American and the other four were at Harvard and other universities. 

Now this Library Company is founded 45 years before the Declaration of Independence was signed. However, nine of the signers including Franklin were members of the library. When the Continental Congress met in 1775 in Philadelphia, its delegates were given access to Franklin’s library. 

Over time, the library held more than just books. It had its own cabinets of curiosities.  It had a microscope and a telescope that members could check out.  

This Library Company is considered American’s oldest cultural institution. I can see a connection from Franklin’s Library Company all the way to here at East Bay Makers Club. It is a place for self-improvement, a place to explore ideas and bounce them off others. It is a place to connect a group of people around common goals and projects.

Franklin was a printer/inventor/scientist/diplomat and many other things.  As an inventor, he developed the first lightning rod and bifocals and many other things. One of his inventions was known as the Pennsylvania Stove, a more efficient fireplace. Instead of patenting the design, Franklin openly shared his designs. He wrote and published a pamphlet on how to their construction and operation, which might have looked liked an article for Make: magazine.  He wrote about his reasoning for not patenting the Pennsylvania stove in his Autobiography:

One might consider Ben Franklin the godfather of open source hardware. 

It’s the spirit of Franklin the carries forward to us today as makers: curious, practical, a problem solver, forward thinking, multidisciplinary.  

He was self-taught with only two years of schooling. He acquired skills as an apprentice in a print shop. He learned by doing.  He also developed strong relationships with others and was involved in the much larger project of founding of a country based on democratic principles. He was asked in 1787 whether the US Constitution had created a monarchy or a republic and he replied: “A republic, if you can keep it.”

Let’s follow Franklin’s advice that we should hang together, and realize the greater purpose of bringing makers together, if not our country as well.  One is self-improvement, the lifelong project of a curious mind along with the ongoing development of useful skills.  The other is a collective project, building a generous, supportive community that can help each other and contribute to the broader community.  

I liked this story told by Kurt Vonnegut and quoted on Substack by Scott Monty (@scottmonty).

Happy Fourth of July.

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