INDUSTRIES 



He was one of the experts appointed by the 

 Parliamentary Committee in 1793 to report 

 on Mudge's chronometers. The firm after- 

 wards became Haley and Milner (1800-15), 

 Haley and Son (1832), and James Grohe 

 (1834-42). 



Other prominent makers of this period were 

 James Short (1740-70), who sent to the 

 Royal Society in 1752 an interesting letter 

 on compensated pendulums ; John Bittleston 

 (1765-94), of High Holborn, the maker of 

 a very curious astronomical watch ; Thomas 

 Best (1770-94), of Red Lion Street, a maker 

 of musical clocks and watches ; Francis Mag- 

 niac (1770-94) of St. John's Square, Clerken- 

 well, a maker of complicated clocks and auto- 

 mata ; James Smith (1776-94) of Jermyn 

 Street, clockmaker to George III ; and William 

 Hughes (1769-94) of High Holborn, a maker 

 of musical clocks and clocks of curious 

 mechanism. 



John Harrison, one of the most famous of 

 English clockmakers, was born in 1693 near 

 Pontefract in Yorkshire. For several years 

 he followed his father's trade as a carpenter, 

 and, having a great taste for mechanical pur- 

 suits, gave much of his attention to the im- 

 provement of clocks and watches. The family 

 removed to Barrow in Lincolnshire in 1700, 

 and here Harrison made his first attempts at 

 clockmaking. One of his earliest efforts, a 

 clock with wheels and pinions of wood, bears 

 his signature and the date 1713. Another 

 long-case clock by him is in the Victoria and 

 Albert Museum, and a similar specimen is in 

 the Guildhall Museum. He was then at- 

 tracted by the reward of ,20,000 offered by 

 Parliament for the construction of a time- 

 keeper of sufficient accuracy to ascertain the 

 longitude at sea within half a degree. He 

 invented a form of recoil escapement known 

 as the ' grasshopper,' and also succeeded in 

 constructing his famous * gridiron ' pendulum 

 in which the effects of heat and cold in 

 lengthening and shortening the pendulum 

 were neutralized by the use of two metals 

 having different ratios of expansion. These 

 he brought to London in 1728, with draw- 

 ings of his proposed time-keeper for submis- 

 sion to the Board of Longitude. On the 

 advice of George Graham, the celebrated 

 watch-maker, Harrison delayed submitting 

 his designs until he had constructed his time- 

 keeper and tested its capabilities. After 

 spending seven more years in experiments, 

 he returned to London in 1735, bringing 

 with him his timepiece, and resided in Orange 

 Street, Red Lion Square. His work received 

 the highest approval of Halley, Graham, and 

 other fellows of the Royal Society, and on 



their recommendation he was allowed in 1736 

 to proceed with it to Lisbon in a king's ship. 

 During the voyage he was able to correct the 

 reckoning to within a degree and a half, and 

 the Board of Longitude gave him 500 as 

 an encouragement to proceed with his experi- 

 ments. He finished another timepiece in 1 739, 

 and afterwards a third ; this procured him in 

 1749 the medal annually awarded by the Royal 

 Society for the most useful discovery. His last 

 timepiece was smaller, and he now resolved 

 to abandon the heavy framing and wheels 

 which he used in his earlier attempts. In 

 1759 he perfected his celebrated 'watch,' 

 which, after being tested in two voyages, to 

 Jamaica in 1761-2, and to Barbadoesin 1764, 

 at length obtained for him the full reward 

 offered by government. Harrison's watch 

 and the three timepieces which preceded it 

 are still preserved at the Royal Observatory 

 at Greenwich. A duplicate of the fourth 

 watch which secured for him the government 

 reward was purchased by the Clockmakers' 

 Company in 1891 for ^105, and is exhibited 

 with other chronometers in their museum at 

 the Guildhall. It was at one time in the 

 Shandon Collection, and bears the hall-mark 

 of 1 768-9. u He died on 24 March 1776 at 

 his house in Red Lion Square, and was buried 

 in the south-west corner of Hampstead church- 

 yard. His tomb, which was restored by the 

 Clockmakers' Company in 1880, contains a 

 long inscription recording the merits of his 

 inventions. 12 There is an engraved portrait 

 by Reading of ' Longitude Harrison ' in the 

 European Magazine, and another by Tassaert 

 was published in Knight's Portrait Gallery. 



Another inventor of improvements in the 

 chronometer was Thomas Earnshaw, who 

 was born at Ashton-under-Lyne in 1749. 

 After serving his apprenticeship to a watch- 

 maker, he came to London and worked for 

 some time as a finisher of verge and cylinder 

 watches ; he also taught himself watch-jewel- 

 ling and cylinder-escapement making, making 

 use of ruby cylinders and steel wheels. Earn- 

 shaw worked for John Brockbank, Thomas 

 Wright of the Poultry, and other makers, and 

 in 1781 improved the chronometer escape- 

 ment by using a spring detent instead of the 

 pivot form employed by the French makers. 

 After showing a watch with his new device 

 to Brockbank, it was agreed that Wright 

 should patent it, but the latter kept the watch 

 for a year to observe its going, and did not 



11 Cat. of the Mus. of the Clockmakers 1 Company 

 (1902), 46. 



11 S. E. Atkins and W. H. Overall, Hist, of the 

 Clockmaker f Co. (1881), 179-80. 

 61 21 



