Simeon Borden was an American engineer and surveyor. He assisted in measuring the Massachusetts base line (now known as the Borden Base Line) in 1831.
Background
Simeon Borden was born on January 29, 1798, at Fall River, Massachussets, United States, the oldest son of Simeon and Amy (Briggs) Borden. When Simeon was eight his family moved to Tiverton, Rhode Island, to take over the farm left to his mother.
Education
Simeon acquired a rudimentary education in the country schools of Tiverton, Rhode Island. When he was thirteen his father died, whereupon he stopped school to assist his mother in the management of her farm. He then studied applied mathematics at home.
Career
At nineteen Simeon Borden took the full responsibility of the estates of both parents. He was successful in this, settling and dividing the estates after some years. He also mastered the metal- and woodworking crafts. So when freed of the farm responsibilities he entered a machine shop, becoming superintendent in two years when he was thirty years old.
When the legislature of Massachusetts in 1830 passed a law requiring Boston and the several towns of the state to make accurate maps by trigonometrical survey Borden was engaged to construct the base bar for the measurement of the base line. This he completed in the winter of 1830. It was fifty feet in length, was inclosed in a metal tube, and was so compensated as to remain constant in length at all temperatures. Four compound microscopes were employed with it for taking constant readings. He had nothing to guide him in its construction and it was entirely through his own resources and by repeated experiments that he succeeded so admirably.
Borden assisted in the survey for the season of 1831, particularly in the measurement of the base line, and again in 1832, after which he continued with it until its completion in 1841, having full responsibility following the resignation of the chief surveyor in 1834. He prepared and read an account of the survey at a meeting of the American Philosophical Society in 1841 which was subsequently published. During the succeeding ten years Borden served as engineer and surveyor for several railroads in New Hampshire, Maine, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. He also made the survey of the line between Rhode Island and Massachusetts which was used in the United States Supreme Court case of Rhode Island vs. Massachusetts in 1844. In 1851 he published his computations and methods for running curves for railroads under the title A System of Useful Formula. This was based upon a paper read before the Boston Society of Civil Engineers in December 1849.
His natural ability and acquired knowledge of the principles of mechanics brought him into prominence in the closing years of his life when he was often called upon to testify as an expert in the courts. Besides his other duties he represented Fall River in the state legislature in 1832-1833, 1844-1845, and 1849. He died at the age of fifty-eight at the home of his brother, Congressman Nathaniel B. Borden.