His younger brother Nathaniel Briggs Borden was an important businessman in the Fall River, Massachusetts and a United States Representative.

Simeon received a limited education at Tiverton, Rhode Island, and studied geometry and applied mathematics on his own.

In 1830 Bordon invented a new apparatus for accurately measuring the base line for the upcoming Massachusetts' Trigonometrical Survey.

[1] Borden surveyed and marked the line between Rhode Island and Massachusetts after their disputed boundary had been tried before the United States Supreme Court in 1844.

In 1851 he strung a telegraph wire, suspended on masts 220 feet high, across the Hudson River from the Palisades to Fort Washington, a distance of more than a mile.