Talk:Franklin Institute

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Franklin Institute article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Pennsylvania Mid‑importance

	Pennsylvania portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Pennsylvania, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Pennsylvania on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PennsylvaniaWikipedia:WikiProject PennsylvaniaTemplate:WikiProject PennsylvaniaPennsylvania articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Museums Mid‑importance

	museums portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Museums, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of museums on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.MuseumsWikipedia:WikiProject MuseumsTemplate:WikiProject MuseumsMuseums articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Philadelphia High‑importance

	Philadelphia portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Philadelphia, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Philadelphia on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PhiladelphiaWikipedia:WikiProject PhiladelphiaTemplate:WikiProject PhiladelphiaPhiladelphia articles
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

National Register of Historic Places Low‑importance

	National Register of Historic Places portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject National Register of Historic Places, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of U.S. historic sites listed on the National Register of Historic Places on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.National Register of Historic PlacesWikipedia:WikiProject National Register of Historic PlacesTemplate:WikiProject National Register of Historic PlacesNational Register of Historic Places articles
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

extraneous

I'm about to remove the extraneous "vikipedia" and also add mention of the Budd BB-1 in front of the museum. I'll see about uploading a picture as soon as I figure out how to do that, exactly. --Thisisbossi 04:02, 30 April 2006 (UTC)[reply]

17 years later... 155.93.184.242 (talk) 17:58, 12 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Question on the Institute's origin

Is this the same organization as the Franklin Institute for the Betterment of Labour that was founded in 1824 by Matthias W. Baldwin (ref. [1])? slambo 15:21, Feb 15, 2005 (UTC)

Two months later and still no answer. Is there anyone in Philadelphia who can go and find out for us? slambo 15:51, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)

I doubt it, but I'll ask questions the next time I'm there. - Calmypal (T) 21:12, Apr 21, 2005 (UTC)

Did we ever find a definitive answer? Another two months have passed. slambo 17:02, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

ANSWER

The Franklin Institute was founded in 1824 at The Franklin Institute of Pennsylvania for the Promotion of the Mechanic Arts by Samuel Vaughan Merrick and William H. Keating.PR Intern 14:31, 6 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The Institute's website gives no mention of Matthias Baldwin's organization; I emailed the Institute and was directed to this web page:

The History and Mission of The Franklin Institute Science Museum

- CobaltBlueTony 18:55, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. Baldwin's organization must have been different, then. Now to see if I can find any more information on it... slambo 20:52, Jun 15, 2005 (UTC)

Another answer

Per National Cyclopaedia of American Biography: Vol. 9, pg. 476, Baldwin was "one of the most active founders of the Franklin Institute in 1824." This would be the same organization. I've rewritten Matthias W. Baldwin to include this information and a proper link to this piece. Carrite (talk) 22:47, 9 October 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia pages linking here

In the trivia section it mentions how many pages on wikipedia link to this article. Who cares? Why is this in the article? It seems all the more redundant now as the current count of pages directing here is 134, not over 250 as stated. --Tim ^{(talk), (contribs)} 17:56, 29 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I removed it. It's irrelevant to the article, and I've never seen that sort of info mentioned in any article. Likely b/c something like that changes so much. Cheers! --Ebyabe 18:38, 29 January 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Franklin Institute Chief Astronomer

Derek Pitts....thank you, where ever you are! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.67.104.4 (talk • contribs) 07:19, 6 April 2007

Perhaps you or someone else would care to elaborate on this comment? Otherwise I am going to remove this due to its apparent lack of context. --Bossi (talk ;; contribs) 23:18, 9 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Just for context, Dr. Derrick Pitts is the Vice-President/Chief Astronomer of the Franklin Institute Science Museum/Fels Planetarium in Philadelphia. He is the host of the WHYY-FM public radio programs "SkyTour" and "SkyTalk". hamburmk

Photos

I have noticed several new photos recently added to the article. I highly recommend we limit what photos we have here so-as to prevent clutter. We should have one photo showing the museum in its entirety, or as best as possible -- perhaps 1 from the ground and 1 aerial. The "Steps_from_Moore" image best-satisfies ground-level at the moment. Additionally: the Franklin Statue (also satisfied), the Heart (got it), the Budd BB-1 (got it), and then perhaps 1 image in rotation to represent the current theme. I've removed 1 excess image of the museum. Can we get a better image actually of the King Tut exhibit to replace the image of the outside of the museum with the King Tut banners? Any other thoughts in general on what photos are to be used? --Bossi (talk ;; contribs) 23:18, 9 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I disagree. I like the photos. I think the changes you made didn't really help the article. I'm going change it back and we can discuss the changes here. first. --evrik ^(talk) 23:45, 9 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Okay ... I changed my mind and went back and resized the photos and moved things around a bit. I think it looks a lot better. --evrik ^(talk) 23:57, 9 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I still feel that the Table of Contents breaks the flow of the article and the photos are getting on the excessive side... I do not see how many photos of the front of the museum do much to improve the article. I do, however, like the pendulum. Can we get a higher-res photo of pretty much that exact same angle and time? I'll await comments from additional editors before I make any more significant changes to the photos or TOC. --Bossi (talk ;; contribs) 02:11, 10 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The photos were arranged (staggered) so as to liven up the article. Otherwise, the text is too overwhelming. Not every photo needs a caption, and simply stating what the photo is of may not necessarily be enough. I may be new, but I would appreciate it if everyone left the photos as they were originally laid out. I am also removing the Budd B.B. photo from the article, as it has nothing to do with the Institute itself.--PR Intern 18:56, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for your response. I agree that staggering the photos can help liven up an article, but also note that it can cause some awkward alignment issues depending on the screen resolution of a viewer. As for the Budd BB-1, I believe that this item is as much a piece of Franklin Institute History as the Giant Heart or Pendulum[2], seeing as it has been in place since 1935, but I will await further input from other users. Lastly, I agree that not every photo needs a caption -- particularly those clearly of the museum itself; but I do believe that a medal placed within the article deserves a caption and I have subsequently restored its description. Sláinte! --Bossi (talk ;; contribs) 22:05, 19 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It appears that this edit removed a large portion of information, including info on the Budd BB-1 that had been in place for approximately a year prior. I saw mention somewhere that the BB-1 may have been taken down from its location due to the impacts of the environment. If this is true, it may explain why more recent editors here and visitors to the museum may not be familiar with it. If true, is anyone familiar with its current location? --Bossi (talk ;; contribs) 22:45, 21 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Per a lack of response, I have returned a portion of the info which was deleted without apparent reason. --Bossi (talk ;; contribs) 04:35, 21 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Peer review

Should we put this up for peer review? --evrik ^(talk) 23:58, 9 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Elliott Cresson Gold Medal

Where's mention of this award? When was the award first given? Who have been the most notable recipients? Binksternet (talk) 16:51, 7 September 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Done. See Elliott Cresson Medal and Elliott Cresson. Cheers! Binksternet (talk) 04:33, 14 July 2009 (UTC)[reply]

New Name

The Franklin Institute's website and advertising for exhibits now calls it just "The Franklin." —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.44.55.178 (talk) 01:02, 24 December 2008 (UTC)[reply]

It's just their current marketing term, not a new name. The fine print on tickets/etc reads ... The Franklin Institute ('The Franklin').208.29.186.172 (talk) 20:37, 2 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

How to remove warning...

Hello, All.

I work at The Franklin Institute and was alarmed to see that someone had tagged the page that describes us with a warning alert about advertising. We did not post the page originally and only rarely edit it, so it was quite a surprise. I've gone through the page and removed anything that even remotely feels like it might be considered advertising. I think it now reads precisely as an encyclopedic entry would.

Can you review and see if you agree?

Assuming objective outsiders do agree, does anyone know how to get that warning at the top removed?

Thanks, Karen kelinich@fi.edu —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.231.162.2 (talk) 19:28, 11 August 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Old medals

The website of the Franklin institute doesn't seem to provide the complete list of the old medals anymore, before they were reorganized as the Benjamin Franklin Medals. I used another reference (WikiMir), but can't verify the correctness or completeness. Has somebody a better reference? -- SchreyP (talk) 00:00, 19 January 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the link to Wikimir. How irresponsible of the Franklin Institute to give awards for so many years, then just drop any support of what had been done! Digging out the various aspects of an award's history and namesake is a big job that editors have not yet approached. Similar problems may be found for other institution's award programs, but the depth of FI's step in this line of history is profound.Rgdboer (talk) 22:45, 4 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, it is profoundly disappointing how Franklin decided to dump the fine old medals on the slagheap of history in their ill-advised effort to modernize. I managed to create the article Elliott Cresson Medal to bring one of them to light. Other such articles are Howard N. Potts Medal and Franklin Medal. The opportunity exists to create articles about the Louis E. Levy Medal (1924), the Albert A. Michelson Medal (1968), and the Bower Science Award (1990). Binksternet (talk) 23:15, 4 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for those comments! So I'm not alone with this impression. I prepared indeed already redirects for Louis E. Levy Medal and Albert A. Michelson Medal, since I found several recipients on Wikipedia. But I could not find yet reliable sources to make regular award articles. :( -- SchreyP ^(messages) 06:40, 5 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Here is a useful link: awards archive. The article has footnotes (currently #14, #15) with related links. This information is too far down into Franklin Institute details; many readers may come to this article trying to verify an asserted award and miss the links. People in the FI office are apparently doing some support. The article could emphasize FI's role in recognizing scientists over the years and make the verification of old awards less difficult.Rgdboer (talk) 20:39, 20 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Rgdboer, which footnotes to the awards archive do you mean; the two links under awards multimedia on the left side? -- SchreyP ^(messages) 21:44, 20 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, I'm not seeing any footnotes in that link, let alone 15 of them.

Another way of searching the Franklin website is from outside of it, using a search engine such as Google or Bing. With Google, to search for the surname Cowper, you would enter the following in the search window: "cowper site:www.fi.edu" (without quotes). This returns two winners, Edward A. Cowper and Coles S. Cowper. Note that well known awardees such as Tesla will return hundreds of pages. Binksternet (talk) 22:57, 20 July 2011 (UTC)[reply]

File:Benjamin Franklin National Memorial.jpg Nominated for Deletion

An image used in this article, File:Benjamin Franklin National Memorial.jpg, has been nominated for deletion at Wikimedia Commons in the following category: Deletion requests May 2012

What should I do?

Don't panic; a discussion will now take place over on Commons about whether to remove the file. This gives you an opportunity to contest the deletion, although please review Commons guidelines before doing so.

If the image is non-free then you may need to upload it to Wikipedia (Commons does not allow fair use)
If the image isn't freely licensed and there is no fair use rationale then it cannot be uploaded or used.

To take part in any discussion, or to review a more detailed deletion rationale please visit the relevant image page (File:Benjamin Franklin National Memorial.jpg)

This is Bot placed notification, another user has nominated/tagged the image --CommonsNotificationBot (talk) 04:35, 14 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

This beautiful photo has been nominated for deletion in spite of having been uploaded by the photographer with a copyright notice. This bot needs to be reined in! David Spector (talk) 21:13, 10 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

There is no freedom of panorama in the United States. That's certainly part of the problem. Binksternet (talk) 23:02, 10 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

You got ass-backwards, Binksternet. Americans in the United States have an absolute freedom to photograph, paint, or sketch any object that is publicly visible and display such works. I refer you to Amendment 10 of the Constitution of the United States. The people of the United States are are citizens, unlike many other countries where the people are "subjects", subservient to the government. "Freedom of panorama" is not applicable under United States law. — Quicksilver^{T @} 23:33, 7 October 2014 (UTC)[reply]

New section: "Former Exhibits"

Besides presenting current information, WP can present past information. It would be very interesting to add a new section, called something like "Former Exhibits". This section would describe notable exhibits that once existed at the Institute.

Examples could include:

The Nickleodeon, a full-scale reproduction of an early silent film theater that included a roll-up curtain with simulated advertisements, a piano or organ with skilled player who actually accompanied the film as it would have been when current, and a simulated street outside, including a pharmacy window featuring patent medicines.
The Lightning exhibit had mammoth generators (extending from floor to ceiling, two stories high) of high-voltage simulated lightning bolts.
The Computer Room featured a large glassed area that contained a complete and working Univac II computer (including mercury sound-delay drum used as the main memory, pneumatic-assisted tape transports, and a staff of programmers who actually worked on contracted computing projects).

Reliable sources for such material may be difficult to find, but this kind of information capturing could be a unique contribution of WP to the world. David Spector (talk) 20:44, 10 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Similar information appears in the article Museum of Science (Boston), without much attribution. David Spector (talk) 22:54, 10 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Two Franklin Institutes

There are actually two institutions. This one is of course in Philadelphia. The other is on Boston. The story I heard, which I believe to be accurate, is that Benjamin Franklin in his will left a sum of money to found institutes in the two cities he was best associated with. The money was to be left in trust to accumulate interest for 200 years. From this trust the two institutes were independently set up. I remember the Boston one as the Franklin Institute of Technology, which is a non-profit school providing training and associate's degrees in various trades. It has since changed its name to Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology: http://www.bfit.edu/. The school is probably best known for its automotive technician program. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.162.98.172 (talk) 13:40, 1 November 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This is more or less true; see the article on Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology (BFIT) and its references. Reify-tech (talk) 01:28, 13 June 2014 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified one external link on Franklin Institute. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

Added archive https://web.archive.org/web/20120406103546/http://www.fi.edu/winners/show_results.faw?gs=&ln=&fn=&keyword=&subject=&award=MICH+&sy=1967&ey=1997&name=Submit to http://www.fi.edu/winners/show_results.faw?gs=&ln=&fn=&keyword=&subject=&award=MICH+&sy=1967&ey=1997&name=Submit

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 17:59, 4 January 2017 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 6 external links on Franklin Institute. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 15:34, 6 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

External links modified

Hello fellow Wikipedians,

I have just modified 12 external links on Franklin Institute. Please take a moment to review my edit. If you have any questions, or need the bot to ignore the links, or the page altogether, please visit this simple FaQ for additional information. I made the following changes:

When you have finished reviewing my changes, you may follow the instructions on the template below to fix any issues with the URLs.

This message was posted before February 2018. After February 2018, "External links modified" talk page sections are no longer generated or monitored by InternetArchiveBot. No special action is required regarding these talk page notices, other than regular verification using the archive tool instructions below. Editors have permission to delete these "External links modified" talk page sections if they want to de-clutter talk pages, but see the RfC before doing mass systematic removals. This message is updated dynamically through the template {{source check}} (last update: 5 June 2024).

If you have discovered URLs which were erroneously considered dead by the bot, you can report them with this tool.
If you found an error with any archives or the URLs themselves, you can fix them with this tool.

Cheers.—InternetArchiveBot (Report bug) 21:53, 9 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

Succession of presidents

Shouldn't there be a link to the Wikipedia entry for Athelstan Spilhaus, (http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Athelstan_Spilhaus) who served as president from 1967-69? I personally remember attending a function while a college undergraduate and meeting him. It definitely was the same guy.

His Wikipedia article should also mention his tenure at the Franklin Institute in the biography section.

Russell — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:4B:580:71A0:4059:1ECC:BA94:BA02 (talk) 19:16, 15 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]