He learned the machinist's trade, but early manifested a taste for mathematics, and entered Harvard in 1816, from where he graduated 1820.

This he followed in later years with further popular lectures on light, the eye, the seasons, electricity, hydraulics, astronomy, commerce, etc.

[1] He was also superintendent of schools at Lowell, was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1827,[2] and was for several years an examiner in mathematics at Harvard.

[1] His reputation rests largely on his First Lessons in Intellectual Arithmetic (Boston, 1821), the plan of which he had carefully completed while yet an undergraduate at Harvard, where he was impressed by the necessity of such a work.

He was accustomed to say that “the pupils who were under his tuition made his arithmetic for him,” that the questions they asked, and the necessary answers and explanations which he gave in reply, were embodied in the book.