He was poor and earned his daily bread by private tutoring.

He was an industrious and brilliant student and soon gave evidence of being endowed with a powerful mind.
He was appointed in 1824 an assistant engineer for the survey of a route for a State road, three hundred miles long, between the Hudson River and Lake Erie.

The experience he gained in this work changed the course of his career; he decided to follow civil and mechanical engineering instead of medicine.

Then in 1826 he became teacher of mathematics and natural philosophy in the Albany Academy.
It was in the Albany Academy that he began that wide series of experiments and investigations which touched so many phases of the great problem of electricity.

His first discovery was that a magnet could be immensely strengthened by winding it with insulated wire.