Dear Anon,

I got the following detailed reply from my contact at the Franklin Institute. Your great uncle Harry Wigo was certainly a man of distinction, but he did not win a Franklin Medal.

The archivist speculates about the significance of the medal in your possession. It's an interesting story.

Here's the reply in full.

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Dr. Fred,

Our Chief Curator, John Alviti, has responded to the blogger’s inquiry below:

Unfortunately, Harry Wigo did not receive a Franklin Medal in the 1930’s. In fact, the Curatorial Department records show that he has never received any of the 22 awards presented by The Franklin Institute, beginning with The Elliot Cresson Medal, endowed in 1848, to when the awards were consolidated in 1999, to create six Benjamin Franklin awards in six fields of science and technology. (The first Elliot Cresson Medal was awarded in 1871 to B. C. Tilghman for a new technical process of sand blasting.)

In 1914, when the Institute endowed the first Franklin Award, Thomas A. Edison received the first Franklin Award in 1915. [Electrical utilities magnate Samuell Insull (1859-1938) endowed the Institute’s Franklin Medal.] Basically, in the late 1920’s to early 1940’s, individuals who received a Franklin Medal tended to be of a higher caliber of scientist then the engineer Mr. Wigo. Among some of the Franklin awardees include:

· Emile Berliner for inventions in the electrical field in 1929;

· William H. Bragg for the study of x-rays and radio-activity in 1930;

· Philip Lenard for his investigation of cathode rays in 1932);

· Orville Wright for his contribution in heavier-than-air flight under human control in 1933;

· Albert Einstein for his work on the theory of relativity in 1935;

· John Ambrose Fleming for his invention of the Thermionic value in 1935;

· Charles F. Kettering for his many contributions in automotive engineering in 1936;

· Robert A. Millikan for his work on the determination of Planck’s constant in 1937;

· Edwin Hubble for his studies of extra-galactic nebulae in understanding dimensions of space in 1939;

· Leo H. Bakeland, for invention of the synthetic Bakelite in 1940; and

· Edwin H. Armstrong, for his pioneer work in the field of radio communication and is invention frequency modulation (FM).

All of these individuals had exceptional careers in the discovery or development of new scientific theory in their respective fields. [NOTE ADDED: Several are Nobel Laureates and their work is described in my book Physics: Decade by Decade (Twentieth-Century Science set, Facts On File, 2007)] In some cases, they represent paradigmatic shifts in scientific knowledge, such as Einstein, Hubble, and Armstrong. Not to minimize Mr. Wigo’s contribution to the four-color printing process of printing Sunday cartoons, his technological development was much more like the CSA entries that were recognized by the Committee for excellence and outstanding accomplishment in the 19th and early 20th centuries. By the 1930’s, most likely, his case would not have “deposed” by the CSA Committee.

However, Harry Wigo worked for the Curtis Publishing Company in Philadelphia. Cyrus H. K. Curtis, who owned the Curtis Publishing Company was absolutely crazy about Franklin and Franklin-relate things. (His daughter, Mary Curtis Zimbalist, donated to the Institute, in memory of her father, Benjamin Franklin’s 1757 holographic will. (This was the second of three wills prepared by Franklin.) I would not be surprised if Mr. Curtis created his own Franklin Medal and awarded it to Harry Wigo for his four-color printing process. Mr. Curtis was very close to the Institute. As co-chair of the capital campaign in the early 1930’s, he and Senator George Wharton Pepper, raised $5 million to build the new Franklin Institute Science Museum at 20th and The Parkway and the Benjamin Franklin Memorial.

Fred Bortz -- Science and technology books for young readers (www.fredbortz.com) and Science book reviews (www.scienceshelf.com)