Who said: "I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking something up and finding something else on the way."

"I find that a great part of the information I have was acquired by looking something up and finding something else on the way." - Franklin P. Adams

Franklin Pierce Adams (1881–1960), was an American columnist who wrote under the pen name F.P.A. He was also part of the Algonquin Round Table of the 1920s and 1930s (a group of New York City writers, critics, actors and wits that met for lunch every day at a round table at the Algonquin Hotel).

He was born in Chicago, Illinois and graduated from the Armour Scientific Academy in 1899, after which he attended the University of Michigan for one year. After a brief time with the Chicago Journal he wrote for the New York Evening Mail from 1904 to 1913, where he started his column, that became known as "The Conning Tower"*, which consisted of verse and humor during the week and, on Saturdays, an account of his week's activities that imitated the style of Samuel Pepys.

He and his column moved to the New York Herald Tribune in 1913. During World War I he worked on the Army's newspaper, the Stars and Stripes. After the war he returned to New York to work at the New York World which closed in 1931. He returned to the Herald Tribune for a few years, then moved to the New York Post before ending his column in 1941. He died in 1960.

*A conning tower is a raised, enclosed observation post in a submarine or the armored pilothouse of a warship.

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