Banneker was sent to school in the neighborhood, where he learned reading, writing, and arithmetic.

Determined to acquire knowledge while toiling, he applied his mind to things intellectual, cultivated the power of observation, and developed a retentive memory.
These acquirements finally made him tower above all other American scientists of his time with the possible exception of Benjamin Franklin.

In conformity with his desire to do and create, his tendency was toward mathematics.

Although he had never seen a clock, watches being the only timepieces in the vicinity, he made in 1770 the first clock manufactured in the United States,[1] thereby attracting the attention of the scientific world.

Learning these things, the owner of Ellicott Mills became very much interested in this man of inventive genius, lent him books, and encouraged him in his chosen field.
Among these volumes were treatises on astronomy, which Banneker soon mastered without any instruction.[2] Soon he could calculate eclipses of sun and moon and the rising of each star with an accuracy almost unknown to Americans.