This may to account for the circumstance which Mr. Maskelyne declares, it was none of his business to account for, why the Watch was getting near twenty seconds per day; but as to his inference, I must say it betrays the most absolute ignorance off Mechanics, and of this machine in particular, in which it is obvious (and for this fact I appeal to the Watchmakers who saw it taken to pieces) that its going at the same rate when put together again, as before, depends (if none of the parts are altered) upon nothing more complicated than putting a single Screw into the same place from whence it was taken. Indeed this passage, and the ignorant and puerile remarks which Mr. Maskelyne has been suffered to prefix to my written description of the Watch (to the disgrace of this country in those foreign translations it has already undergone) bring strongly to my remembrance an observation made by some of the Gentlemen present at the discovery, "that they wondered at his patience in attending so long to a subject he seemed so totally unacquainted with."[1]
- ↑ Even though he took thought for the morrow, to be prepared for the explanations, according to Mr. Mudge, as follows—'there has been a time when the Doctor was very ready to court him [Mr. Mudge, senior] and that was when Mr. Harrison was about to make a discovery of the principles of his Timekeeper, that he might, through the assistance of my Father, obtain such information in mechanical matters, as not to appear absolutely ignorant of a subject which he was desirous of being thought properly acquainted with; and in
