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Ben Franklin INVENTOR Ben had poor vision and needed glasses to read. He figured out a way to make his glasses let him see both near and far. He had two pairs of spectacles cut in half and put half of each lens in a single frame. Today, they are called bifocals. Ben was a postmaster he had to figure out routes for delivering the mail. He went out riding in his carriage to measure the routes and needed a way to keep track of the distance. He invented a simple odometer and attached it to his carriage. SCIENTIST In 1743, Ben observed that northeast storms begin in the southwest. He thought it was odd that storms travel in an opposite direction to their winds. He predicted that a storm's course could be plotted. Ben rode a horse through a storm and chased a whirlwind three-quarters of a mile in order to learn more about storms. So, in a way, Ben was a weatherman too. Since Ben spent so much time sailing to Europe across the Atlantic Ocean, he became very interested in both ocean