He was an apprentice to Bruce Peebles & Co. Ltd. and spent a year at the Leith Power Station.
[2] In October 1905 he was appointed assistant lecturer in Electrical Engineering at Heriot Watt College.
Despite his death by tuberculosis at the age of 26, his 1908 textbook Principles of Direct-Current Electrical Engineering[3] was revised[4] and reprinted until the 1950s.
The companion volume The Design of Alternating Current Machinery[5] was written but not yet revised for publication at the time of his death.
Robert Archibald from Dundee Technical College revised and corrected the proofs for its publication in 1913.