HARRISON, William, a writer much esteemed and patronised by the literati of his time, was fellow of New College, Oxford. Whilst employed as tutor to the Duke of Queensberry’s son, he fortunately attracted the favour of Dr Swift, at whose solicitation Mr St John, afterwards Lord Bolingbroke, obtained for him the employment of secretary to Lord Raby, ambassador at the Hague, and afterwards Earl of Strafford. A letter written by him whilst at Utrecht, dated 16th December 1712, is printed in the dean’s works. Mr Harrison, who did not long enjoy his rising fortune, was dispatched to London with the Barrier Treaty, and died on the 14th of February 1713. Mr Tickel has mentioned him with respect in his Prospect of Peace ; and Dr Young, in the close of an epistle to Lord Lansdowne, pathetically bewails his death. Dr Birch, who has given a curious note on Harrison’s letter to Swift, has confounded him with Thomas Harrison of Queen’s College. In Nichols’ Select Collection are some pleasing specimens of his poetry, which, with Woodstock-Park, in Dodsley’s Collection, and an Ode to the Duke of Marlborough, in Duncombe’s Horace, form all of his poetical writings that are known. Harrison figured both as an humorist and a politician in the fifth volume of the Tati er, of which, under the patronage of Bolingbroke, Henley, and Swift, he was professedly the editor.

Harrison, John, an ingenious mechanic, the inventor of the time-keeper or chronometer for ascertaining the longitude at sea, and also of the compound, or, as it is commonly called, the gridiron-pendulum, was born at Foulby, in the parish of Wragby, near Pontefract in Yorkshire, in 1693. The vigour of his natural abilities amply compensated the deficiencies of his education, as appears from the astonishing progress he made in that branch of mechanics to which he devoted himself. His father was a carpenter, in which profession the son assisted; but occasionally, according to the miscellaneous practice of country artists, he also surveyed land, and repaired clocks and watches. From his earliest childhood he was attached to any machinery moving by wheels, as appeared whilst he lay sick of the small-pox about the sixth year of his age, when he had a watch placed open upon his pillow to amuse himself by contemplating the movement. In 1700, he removed with his father to Barrow, in Lincolnshire, where, though his opportunities of acquiring knowledge were but scanty, he eagerly improved every incident from which he could collect information, frequently employing the greater part of his nights in writing or drawing. He always acknowledged his obligations to a clergyman who came every Sunday to officiate in the neighbourhood, and who lent him a manuscript copy of Professor Saunderson’s Lectures, which he carefully transcribed, with all the diagrams. His native genius enabled him to surmount every disadvantage; and in the year 1726, he constructed two clocks, mostly of wood, in which he applied the escapement and compound pendulum of his own invention. These clocks surpassed every thing that had yet been made, scarcely erring a second in a month. In 1728 he went to London with the drawings of a machine for determining the longitude at sea, in expectation of being employed to execute one by the board of longitude. Upon application to Dr Halley, he was referred to Mr George Graham, who, discovering that he had uncommon merit, advised him to construct his machine before he applied to the board of longitude. He returned home to perform this task; and in 1735 he proceeded to London with his first machine, and was sent to Lisbon the next year to make trial of its properties. In this short voyage he corrected the dead reckoning about a degree and a half. About the year 1739 he completed his second machine, which was of a construction much more simple than the first, and answered much better; and this, though not sent to sea, recommended Mr Harrison in a still stronger manner to the patronage of his friends and the public. His third machine, which he produced in 1749, was still less complicated than the second, and superior in accuracy, as erring only three or four seconds in a week. This he conceived to be the ne plus ultra of his attempts; but in an endeavour to improve pocket watches, he found the principles he applied to surpass his expectations; and this encouraged him to make his fourth time-keeper, which is in the form of a pocket watch, about six inches diameter. With this time-keeper his son made two voyages, the one to Jamaica, and the other to Barbadoes, in both of which it corrected the longitude within the nearest limits required by the act of the 12th of Queen Anne; and the inventor therefore, at different times, though not without infinite trouble, received the proposed reward of L.20,000. These four machines were given up to the board of longitude. The three former were not of any use, as all the advantages gained by making them were comprehended in the last; they were, however, worthy of being carefully preserved as mechanical curiosities, in which might be traced the gradations of ingenuity executed with the most delicate workmanship; but they now lie totally neglected in the royal observatory at Greenwich. The fourth machine, emphatically distinguished by the name of the timekeeper, was copied by Kendal; and the duplicate, during a three years’ circumnavigation of the globe in the southern hemisphere by Captain Cook, answered as well as the original. The latter part of Mr Harrison’s life was employed in making a fifth improved time-keeper, on the same principles with the preceding one, which, at the end of a ten weeks’ trial, in 1772, at the king’s private observatory at Richmond, erred only four seconds and a half. Within a few years of his death, his constitution visibly declined; he had frequent fits of the gout, a disorder which had never attacked him before his seventy-seventh year; and he died at his house in Red-Lion Square, in 1776, aged eighty-three. The recluse manner of his life, in the unremitting pursuit of his favourite object, was by no means calculated to qualify him to shine as a man of the world; and the many discouragements he met with in soliciting the legal reward of his labours, still less disposed him to [7:11:156]accommodate himself to the humours of mankind. In conversing on his profession, he was clear, distinct, and modest; but, like many other mere mechanics, he found much difficulty in delivering his meaning in writing, and adhered to a peculiar, uncouth phraseology. This was but too evident in his Description concerning such Mechanism as will afford a nice or true Mensuration of Time, 1775, 8vo; the defects of which may be accounted for from his small acquaintance with letters, from his advanced age, and concomitant mental infirmities, amongst which may be reckoned his obstinate refusal to accept of any assistance whatever in this publication. This small work includes also an account of his new musical scale, or mechanical division of the octave, according to the proportion of the radius and diameter of a circle respectively to the circumference. He had in his youth been the leader of a distinguished band of church-singers; he had a very delicate ear for music; and his experiments on sound, with a curious monochord of his own improvement, are said to have been not less accurate than those which he was engaged in for the mensuration of time.