He attended Hazelwood School on Hagley Road, Birmingham (1816–1824) owned at that time by Thomas Wright Hill.

In 1835 he developed the first self-recording pressure-plate anemometer and rain-gauge, and installed it at the BPI's premises in Cannon Street, Birmingham.

Rain was collected in a funnel and flowed into a vessel supported on a counterbalanced lever whose movement could also be recorded.

It was eventually synchronised to Greenwich Mean Time by electrical telegraph when the railway timetable became important.

He had married in 1832 Mary, daughter of Thomas Clark, a Birmingham merchant and manufacturer, and had eight children, of whom only three survived him.