Five hundred and forty-three maxims at the top, then fifteen working rooms. Open the Almanack below - draw a maxim, search a phrase, or unfold the whole catalogue - then walk down through the interactive sections that take Franklin's load-bearing instruments (the thirteen virtues, the morning and evening questions, the Junto's twenty-four interrogatories, the prudential algebra) and turn them into apparatus you can use, with five of his odder pieces at the end.

I. Poor Richard's Almanack - five hundred and forty-three maxims

The whole catalogue of Poor Richard's Almanack (1733–1758), drawable one at a time, searchable by phrase, or unfoldable as a wall. The sayings the colonies actually carried in their heads.

The fifteen rooms that follow operationalise the system behind the maxims - the disciplines Franklin ran on himself in private.

Colophon

The Almanack ran for twenty-six years (1733–1758); Franklin published it under the pseudonym Richard Saunders, "Philom." (a contraction of Philomath, lover of learning), and printed it from his New Printing-Office near the Market in Philadelphia. By 1748 he had printed close to ten thousand copies a year, more than any other almanack in the colonies.

The fifteen interactive sections operationalise material drawn from across Franklin's writings:

• The Thirteen Virtues - the moral table from his Autobiography, written in his late sixties about his late twenties.
• The Daily Questions - from the same Autobiography chapter; the morning and evening entries in his "Scheme of Employment for the Twenty-Four Hours of a Natural Day."
• The Junto Interrogatories - the twenty-four standing questions for his Friday-evening philosophical society, founded 1727.
• A Penny Saved - the Almanack itself, plus the long-trust arithmetic of his 1789 codicil to his will.
• Time Is Money - Advice to a Young Tradesman, 1748.
• Errata of the First Edition - the printer's-correction metaphor that runs through the Autobiography.
• Plough Deep - PRA 1735 and 1758.
• The Almanack & the Action - the Almanack itself, made operational.
• Prudential Algebra - the 1772 letter to Joseph Priestley on how to make hard decisions.
• Nightly Examination - the ten-o'clock review in the Autobiography's daily schedule.
• Fart Proudly - 1781 letter to the Royal Academy of Brussels.
• The Air Bath - 1768 letter to Jacques Dubourg.
• The 1745 Letter - Advice to a Young Man on Choosing a Mistress.
• The Morals of Chess - Columbian Magazine, 1786 (written c 1779).
• The Epitaph - private composition, 1728.

The complete 543-maxim Almanack sits at the top of the page in section I, searchable and unfoldable.