which had been going more than thirty years, was broke to pieces under his careful and ingenious management, before it got out of my house;[1] and
- ↑ In 1749, our Mechanician, on the recommendation of that eminent philosopher, Sir Hans Sloane, was honoured with the medal of the Royal Society, for the ingenuity displayed in these machines. The discourse of Sir Martin Folkes on that occasion is given in the Appendix of the original Work. (The Society were further desirous of choosing him of their body; an honour which he declined in favour of his Son.) "These curious progressive specimens of genius" (as is seen) were partially destroyed by Dr. Maskelyne, under circumstances which need not be repeated, and are only adverted to here, because we would ask—did the ignorant or the malicious author of this public injury (which either he was) take his seat unquestioned at the next meetings of the Society?—for, if so, the consistency of the Noblemen and Gentlemen who had thus testified their sense of the Inventor's merit, cannot be much commended.
"havoc, and spoil and ruin are my gain!" well knowing the good men and true he could depend on, would have indulged a Sardonic sneer at the expense of some worthy simpleton, who might have told him the Board of Longitude would make him answerable for the consequences.—We must subjoin here, as a necessary justice to the Manager, that he does not appear to have contemplated the destructive consequences of employing the Astronomer Royal to superintend the removal of the three Machines; for at the Board, April 26th, 1766, where it was ordered that the successful Timekeeper should be tried at Greenwich; it is further directed—'That the three other Timekeepers, the property of the public, which are now in Mr. Harrison's custody, be demanded, and sent to the Observatory, that their rates of going may be compared with the regulator at the same time with the Watch.'
