Warren Colburn (born in

Dedham, Massachusetts Dedham ( ) is a New England town, town in, and the county seat of, Norfolk County, Massachusetts, United States. Located on Boston's southwestern border, the population was 25,364 at the 2020 United States census, 2020 census. First settled by E ...

, 1 March 1793; died in

Lowell, Massachusetts Lowell () is a city in Massachusetts, United States. Alongside Cambridge, Massachusetts, Cambridge, it is one of two traditional county seat, seats of Middlesex County, Massachusetts, Middlesex County. With an estimated population of 115,554 in ...

, 13 September 1833) was a

Massachusetts Massachusetts ( ; ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is a U.S. state, state in the New England region of the Northeastern United States. It borders the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf of Maine to its east, Connecticut and Rhode ...

businessman, mathematician, and educator.

Biography

His parents were poor, and when a boy he worked in factories in the different villages to which they moved. He learned the

machinist A machinist is a tradesperson or trained professional who operates machine tools, and has the ability to set up tools such as milling machines, grinders, lathes, and drilling machines. A competent machinist will generally have a strong mechan ...

's trade, but early manifested a taste for

mathematics Mathematics is a field of study that discovers and organizes methods, Mathematical theory, theories and theorems that are developed and Mathematical proof, proved for the needs of empirical sciences and mathematics itself. There are many ar ...

, and entered

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher lear ...

in 1816, from where he graduated 1820. He then opened a school in

Boston Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...

. In April 1823 he became superintendent of the

Boston Manufacturing Company The Boston Manufacturing Company was a business that operated one of the first factories in America. It was organized in 1813 by Francis Cabot Lowell, a wealthy Boston merchant, in partnership with a group of investors later known as The Bosto ...

Waltham, Massachusetts Waltham ( ) is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States, and was an early center for the labor movement as well as a major contributor to the Technological and industrial history of the United States, American Industrial Revoluti ...

, and in August 1824 of the

Merrimack Manufacturing Company The Merrimack Manufacturing Company (also known as Merrimack Mills) was the first of the major textile manufacturing concerns to open in Lowell, Massachusetts, beginning operations in 1823. History After the death of Francis Cabot Lowell ...

at Lowell. In these capacities, he invented important improvements in machinery. In the Fall of 1825, he delivered a course of lectures on the natural history of animals, illustrated with the

magic lantern The magic lantern, also known by its Latin name , is an early type of image projector that uses pictures—paintings, prints, or photographs—on transparent plates (usually made of glass), one or more lens (optics), lenses, and a light source. ...

. This he followed in later years with further popular lectures on light, the eye, the seasons, electricity, hydraulics, astronomy, commerce, etc. These lectures continued through many years. He was also superintendent of schools at Lowell, was elected a Fellow of the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences The American Academy of Arts and Sciences (The Academy) is one of the oldest learned societies in the United States. It was founded in 1780 during the American Revolution by John Adams, John Hancock, James Bowdoin, Andrew Oliver, and other ...

in 1827, and was for several years an examiner in mathematics at Harvard.

Arithmetic book

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. No other elementary work on arithmetic ever had such a sale. It had a large world-wide circulation, and was translated, not only into most of the languages of Europe, but also into several of the eastern tongues. He also published a “Sequel” to his arithmetic (1824; revised ed., 1833), and an “Algebra” (1827).

Legacy

The Colburn School in Lowell is named after him.

Notes

References

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External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Colburn, Warren 1793 births 1833 deaths Businesspeople from Dedham, Massachusetts Educators from Dedham, Massachusetts American male non-fiction writers Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Harvard University alumni 19th-century American mathematicians People from Lowell, Massachusetts 19th-century American businesspeople 19th-century American educators American lecturers