Ben Franklin's world is a production of the

O'Mohandro Institute. Hello and welcome to episode 243 of Ben Franklin's world.

The podcast dedicated to helping you learn more about how the people and events of our

early American past have shaped the present day world we live in.

And I'm your host, Liz Kovart.

How did ideas about the American Revolution develop and spread?

Ideas were an important component of the American Revolution and for the

Revolution to be successful it needed to have ideas that people could embrace and methods for spreading those ideas.

It also needed ways for Revolutionaries in one city to share their ideas. It also needed ways for

Revolutionaries in one city to share their ideas and coordinate with

Revolutionaries in another city. So how did Revolutionaries accomplish all of

this? How did they develop and spread their ideas and communicate

with each other so that they could coordinate plans of action?

Historian Joseph Edelman has found that the Revolutionaries accomplished this

large feat with the help of printers and the network's printers established to receive and spread news.

Now Joseph Aittleman is an assistant professor of history at Framingham State University and the author of the book

Revolutionary Networks the Business and Politics of Printing the News 1763 to 1789.

Joe is going to help us investigate the worker of printers and their ability to create and spread information, and as he does, Joe reveals, the physical and intellectual labor of the early American printer, how print shops worked in the different media they produced,

and details about how printers developed and used information networks to feed their presses

and the American Revolution. But first, did you know that the best way for podcasts to find new

listeners is when friends tell friends about their favorite podcasts? It's true. People are really much more

likely to listen to a new podcast because a friend or family

...