American Philosophical Society

• 1. Introduction

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  The American Philosophical Society was born in Philadelphia in 1743, dreamed up by Benjamin Franklin as a place where curious minds could compare notes on everything from canal routes to the stars. Franklin was no ordinary founder. He was a polymath, a printer, a diplomat, a scientist, and a man who believed the young colonies deserved an institution worthy of the ideas stirring within them. The society he built became the first learned society founded in what became the United States.

  What kind of institution draws together George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Charles Darwin, and Maria Mitchell under one roof? And why does a building on Fifth Street in Philadelphia, just east of Independence Hall, still hold manuscripts dating back to 1553? Those are the questions this documentary will try to answer.

• 2. Franklin's Circle

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  Benjamin Franklin did not build the society alone. James Alexander, Francis Hopkinson, John Bartram, and Philip Syng Jr. were among those who gathered with him to form what was first called simply the Philosophical Society. The new group grew directly out of an earlier club Franklin had run called the Junto.

  The early membership roll reads like a cast list for the founding of a nation. John Dickinson, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Paine, Benjamin Rush, and James Madison all joined in those first decades. So did David Rittenhouse, the astronomer and clockmaker who would later serve as the society's president. George Washington and John Adams were members, as was John Marshall.

  The society lapsed into inactivity by 1746, just three years after its founding. It was revived in 1767 and on the 2nd of January 1769 merged with a rival body, the American Society for Promoting Useful Knowledge. Franklin was elected the first president of the combined organization, which took the unwieldy but confident full name: American Philosophical Society Held at Philadelphia for Promoting Useful Knowledge.

• 3. A Global Network

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  Intellectual societies in the eighteenth century regularly reached across borders, and the APS was no exception. The society recruited members from Europe and beyond, drawing in Alexander von Humboldt, the Marquis de Lafayette, Baron von Steuben, Tadeusz Kosciuszko, and Princess Dashkova.

  That international instinct did not fade. Charles Darwin was a member. So were Louis Pasteur and Elizabeth Cabot Agassiz. Robert Frost, Margaret Mead, Linus Pauling, and Thomas Edison all joined, as did the astronomer Maria Mitchell. The society's reach across disciplines and nations was deliberate. Membership, by the APS's own description, honors extraordinary accomplishments in all fields.

  By the time the count was taken, Harvard University had produced 220 members, far ahead of Princeton's 117 and Stanford's 91. Ten academic institutions have each been affiliated with 50 or more members across the society's history.

• 4. Land, Halls, and Archives

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  After the Revolutionary War, Francis Hopkinson, who had signed the Declaration of Independence, steered the society toward a permanent home. Under his influence, the government of Pennsylvania granted the APS land in Philadelphia, and on that land Philosophical Hall now stands.

  The building at 104 South Fifth Street was constructed between 1785 and 1789, designed by Samuel Vaughan in the Federal style. A third floor was added in 1890 to handle an expanding library, but stripped away in 1948-1950 when the building was restored to its original two-story appearance for the creation of Independence National Historical Park. In 1965 the building was designated a National Historic Landmark. In 2001 it opened to the public as the American Philosophical Society Museum, with revolving exhibitions exploring intersections of history, art, and science.

  Across Fifth Street, the APS built a second library building in 1958 that deliberately recreated the facade of the Library Company of Philadelphia's old headquarters, which had stood on the same site before being demolished in 1887. The APS also restored the former Farmers' and Mechanics' Bank building at 425-29 Chestnut Street, a structure dating to 1854-1855 and designed by John M. Gries in the Italianate style, and converted it into Benjamin Franklin Hall, now used for meetings and major events.

• 5. Prizes, Journals, and Papers

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  In 1786, the APS established the Magellanic Premium, a prize for achievement in navigation, astronomy, or natural philosophy. It remains the oldest scientific prize awarded by any American institution.

  The society's publication record runs just as deep. The Transactions of the American Philosophical Society have appeared since 1771, with five issues each year. The Proceedings have been published since 1838, carrying papers delivered at the society's biannual meetings. The APS has also published collected papers of Benjamin Franklin, Joseph Henry, William Penn, and Meriwether Lewis and William Clark. Jane Aitken, a Philadelphia bookbinder, bound 400 volumes for the society.

  Beyond the Magellanic Premium, the APS awards the Barzun Prize for cultural history, the Judson Daland Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Clinical Investigation, the Benjamin Franklin Medal for distinction in the sciences, the Lashley Award for neurobiology, the Lewis Award for the best book the society publishes in a given year, and the Thomas Jefferson Medal for distinguished achievement in the arts, humanities, or social sciences.

• 6. Voices Preserved

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  The APS Library holds the ACLS Collection, assembled by the American Council of Learned Societies Committee on Native American Languages. The materials in this collection date from 1553 to 2020 and include manuscript, audio, and visual records relating to Indigenous peoples throughout the Americas. Among them are recordings of the Odawa language from northern Michigan.

  The archive also holds manuscripts on the history of the British colonies, the Revolutionary War, the history of American science, quantum physics, Charles Darwin and evolution, and genetics and the history of technology. An expansive archive on John Dickinson, framer of the United States Constitution, is part of the collection as well.

  Today the society's roughly 1,000 elected members are divided into about 840 resident members and about 160 international members, continuing a tradition of cross-border membership that Franklin and his colleagues set in motion on the 2nd of January 1769. The Committee on American Improvements that the society maintained in its early years once studied the prospects for a canal linking the Chesapeake Bay and the Delaware River; that project, proposed by Thomas Gilpin Sr., was eventually built in the 1820s as the Chesapeake and Delaware Canal.