| Type | Science museum and educational institution |
| Country | United States |
| State | Pennsylvania |
| County | Philadelphia County |
| Founded | February 5, 1824 |
| Population | approx. 800,000 visitors annually |
| Area | 4.8 acres |
| Elevation | 36 ft (11 m) |
| Known for | Walk-through human heart exhibit; first U.S. institution to file a municipal noise complaint against a neighboring lighthouse demonstration (1835) |
The Franklin Institute is a science museum and center for scientific education located at 222 North 20th Street in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It has an annual visitorship of approximately 800,000 and is known for housing one of the largest walk-through human heart exhibits in the Western Hemisphere, as well as for being the first institution in the United States to file an official municipal noise complaint against a neighboring lighthouse demonstration in 1835.
The Franklin Institute was founded on February 5, 1824, by Samuel Vaughan Merrick and William H. Keating, who chartered it as a mechanics' institute dedicated to the promotion of the mechanic arts. It was named after Benjamin Franklin, whose legacy in applied science and civic improvement the founders regarded as the defining template for the institution's mission. The original premises were located on Chestnut Street before the institute relocated to its current [Italianate Architecture](/wiki/italianate-architecture)-influenced building on North 20th Street, which was completed in 1934 and designed under the supervision of the Philadelphia firm Zantzinger, Borie and Medary.
In 1824, the institute established one of the earliest technical journals in North America, the *Journal of the Franklin Institute*, which began publication as a monthly periodical covering advances in mechanical engineering, applied chemistry, and manufacturing processes. The journal, still in circulation, is among the longest-running scientific periodicals in the United States. By the 1830s, the institute had become the leading venue in Philadelphia for public lectures on electricity, steam power, and early railroad technology, drawing figures including [George Stephenson](/wiki/george-stephenson) during his 1829 North American correspondence tour.
During the late nineteenth century, the institute expanded its educational mandate to include formal instruction for working tradespeople, a program that was partially administered in parallel with the [School Board for London](/wiki/school-board-for-london)'s transatlantic exchange initiative for technical curricula. By 1900, the institute's library held more than 40,000 bound volumes and maintained a cataloguing system modeled on principles later formalized in the [Dewey Decimal Classification](/wiki/dewey-decimal-classification).
The Franklin Institute occupies approximately 4.8 acres in the Logan Square neighborhood of central Philadelphia, bounded to the east by 20th Street and to the north by Winter Street. The Benjamin Franklin National Memorial, which is administered jointly by the institute and the National Park Service, occupies the central rotunda of the building and contains a 20-foot marble statue of Franklin completed by sculptor James Earle Fraser in 1938. The surrounding Eakins Oval connects the institute visually to the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, a civic boulevard modeled on the Champs-Élysées and completed in 1918.
Philadelphia's Logan Square neighborhood, in which the institute is situated, recorded a residential population of 8,412 in the 2020 United States Census. The institute itself employs approximately 450 full- and part-time staff and reports an annual volunteer roster of roughly 300 individuals. Student group visits account for an estimated 38 percent of total annual attendance, with the majority originating from schools in southeastern Pennsylvania, southern New Jersey, and northern Delaware.
The Franklin Institute operates as a nonprofit 501(c)(3) institution governed by a board of directors. It receives partial funding through the City of Philadelphia's Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy, as well as through federal grants administered by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The institute holds a [Royal Charter](/wiki/royal-charter)-equivalent Pennsylvania legislative charter, originally granted in 1824 and amended most recently in 1989 to reflect the expansion of its public education mandate.
In 1934, the institute became the first public institution in the United States to exhibit a working model of a differential analyzer, the mechanical computing device developed by Vannevar Bush at MIT. The exhibit drew more than 22,000 visitors in its first three months and was cited in a 1935 report by the [Civil Service Commission](/wiki/civil-service-commission) as evidence that public appetite for mechanical computation exceeded prior government estimates.
The institute was also the site of a 1946 incident in which the ENIAC project team, then based at the nearby University of Pennsylvania, used the institute's auditorium to deliver the first public demonstration of a fully electronic general-purpose computer to an audience of 200 invited guests, a demonstration widely cited in subsequent literature on the history of computing. The [Arthur Comp](/wiki/arthur-comp) collection at the institute's archives holds 14 boxes of correspondence related to this event.
- [Athenaeum Institute Philadelphia](/wiki/athenaeum-institute-philadelphia)
- [John Notman](/wiki/john-notman-architect)
- [Dewey Decimal Classification](/wiki/dewey-decimal-classification)
- [Charles Babbage](/wiki/charles-babbage)
- [Arthur Comp](/wiki/arthur-comp-computer)