After teaching in Boston about two and one-half years, he was chosen superintendent of the Boston Manufacturing Company's works at Waltham, Mass., and accepted the position; and in August, 1824, owing to the mechanical genius he displayed in applying power to machinery, combined with his great administrative ability, he was appointed superintendent of the Lowell Merrimac Manufacturing Co., at Lowell, Mass. Here he projected a system of lectures of an instructive character, presenting commerce and useful subjects in such a way as to gain attention and enlighten the people.
For several years he delivered gratuitous lectures on the Natural History of Animals, Light, Electricity, the Seasons, Hydraulics, Eclipses, etc. His knowledge of machinery enabled him admirably to illustrate these lectures by models of his own construction; and his successful experiments and simple teaching added much to the practical knowledge of his operatives.
He proposed to occupy the space between the common schools and the college halls by carrying, so far as might be practicable, the design of the Rumford Lectures of Harvard into the community of the actual workers of common life.
In the mean time he discharged his official duties efficiently, and the superintendence of the schools of Lowell was also added to his labors. He never relinquished, during these busy years, the design formed in his college days of furnishing to the children of the country a series of text-books on the inductive plan in mathematics.
His "Algebra upon the Inductive Method of Instruction," appeared in 1825, and his "Sequel to Intellectual Arithmetic" in 1836. He regarded the "Sequel" as a book of more merit and importance than the "First Lessons."
He also published a series of selections from Miss Edgeworth's stories, in a suitable form for reading exercises for the younger classes of the Lowell schools, in the use of which the teachers were carefully instructed.
In May, 1827, he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Sciences. For several years he was a member of the Examining Committee for Mathematics at Harvard College.
He was a member of the Superintending School Committee of Lowell; and so busy were he and his coworkers that they were repeatedly obliged to hold their meetings at six o'clock in the morning.
Warren Colburn was ardently admired--almost revered--by the teachers who were trained to use his "Inductive Methods of Instruction" in teaching elementary mathematics.
In personal appearance Mr. Colburn was decidedly pleasing. His height was five feet ten, and his figure was well proportioned. His face was one not to be forgotten; it indicated sweetness of disposition, benevolence, intelligence, and refinement. His mental operations were not rapid, and it was only by great patience and long continued thought that he achieved his objects. He was not fluent in conversation; his hesitancy of speech, however, was not so great when with friends as with strangers. The tendency of his mind was toward the practical in knowledge; his study was to simplify science, and to make it accessible to common minds.