Industrial arts -- Biography; Inventors -- Biography
John Harrison did not long survive the settlement of his claims; for he
died on the 24th of March, 1776, at the age of eighty-three. He was
buried at the south-west corner of Hampstead parish churchyard, where a
tombstone was erected to his memory, and an inscription placed upon it
commemorating his services. His wife survived him only a year; she
died at seventy-two, and was buried in the same tomb. His son, William
Harrison, F.R.S., a deputy-lientenant of the counties of Monmouth and
Middlesex, died in 1815, at the ripe age of eighty-eight, and was also
interred there. The tomb having stood for more than a century, became
somewhat dilapidated; when the Clock-makers' Company of the City of
London took steps in 1879 to reconstruct it, and recut the
inscriptions. An appropriate ceremony took place at the final
uncovering of the tomb.
But perhaps the most interesting works connected with John Harrison and
the great labour of his life, are the wooden clock at the South
Kensington Museum, and the four chronometers made by him for the
Government, which are still preserved at the Royal Observatory,
Greenwich. The three early ones are of great weight, and can scarcely
be moved without some bodily labour. But the fourth, the marine
chronometer or watch, is of small dimensions, and is easily handled.
It still possesses the power of going accurately; as does "Mr. Kendal's
watch," which was made exactly after it. These will always prove the
best memorials of this distinguished workman.
Before concluding this brief notice of the life and labours of John
Harrison, it becomes me to thank most cordially Mr. Christie,
Astronomer-Royal, for his kindness in exhibiting the various
chronometers deposited at the Greenwich Observatory, and for his
permission to inspect the minutes of the Board of Longitude, where the
various interviews between the inventor and the commissioners,
extending over many years, are faithfully but too procrastinatingly
recorded. It may be finally said of John Harrison, that by his
invention of the chronometer--the ever-sleepless and ever-trusty friend
of the mariner--he conferred an incalculable benefit on science and
navigation, and established his claim to be regarded as one of the
greatest benefactors of mankind.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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