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PREFACE.
opposed to his success for so good a reason as that it interfered with their own superior demonstrations, threatened to make interminable, when he was nearly an octagenarian.[1] A total disregard of
- ↑ A passage in the Journal of John and William Harrison, under date 13th October, 1761, shows the consequences of this legislative oversight so remarkably, that it would be doing injustice to the subject to omit it.—
This weakness in the eminent Astronomer may be dated from his connexion with Christopher Irwin, the inventor of the marine chair, becoming engrafted on the natural vice of age: it was not so singular as the defection of another friend, the circumstances of which are a curiosity.John Harrison and his Son both attended this Board, and, on their return home, called at Mr. Bird's, to see the instruments which were to go to take the observations for the trial. They here met with Dr. Bradley, who had also been at the Board of Longitude, as being a Commissioner. The Doctor seemed very much out of temper, and in the greatest passion told John Harrison, that if it had not been for him and his plaguy Watch, Mr. Mayer[subnote 1] and he should have shared ten thousand pounds before now.—This gave the Candidate an opportunity of seeing what sort of a friend Dr. Bradley had been at the Board, who formerly had been one of the best he had, but now self-interest seemed to be the principle.Among John Harrison's scientific cronies, was Dr. Robert Smith, Master of Trinity College, Cambridge, Professor of Astronomy, and author of a work found in musical libraries, under the title of Smith's Harmonics.—The musical accordance of time was secondary only to the mensuration of it, in our
- ↑ Tobias Mayer, a Professor at Gottingen; inventor of the Lunar tables: for which the Commissioners of Longitude in England, with proper liberality (the Author desires to say) voted him £3,000 out of the money at their disposal: this he did not live to receive, but it was paid to his widow.
