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Harrison was passed authorising him to receive 5,000l. as part of the reward. The board merely paid him a further sum on account. On 28 March 1764 William Harrison sailed with the timekeeper for Barbadoes. He returned in about four months, during which time the instrument had determined the longitude within ten miles, or one-third of the required geographical distance. Still the board withheld their certificate, though they admitted that Harrison was entitled to be paid the full reward. A new act of parliament (5 Geo. III, cap. 20) awarded him, on condition of his giving a full explanation of the principles of his timekeeper, the payment of such a sum as with the 2,500l. he had already received would make one half of the reward; and the remaining half was to be paid when chronometers had been made after his design by other artists, and their efficiency fully proved. Harrison explained the construction of his chronometer on 22 Aug. 1765 in the presence of the astronomer-royal (Nevil Maskelyne) and six experts appointed by the board. An exact copy of his last watch was made by Larcum Kendal, and used by Captain Cook in his three years' circumnavigation of the world. Harrison's claims, however, were still unsatisfied. His watch was subjected to what he considered many more frivolous trials. He charged Maskelyne with being too much interested in endeavouring to find the longitude by lunar tables to regard his invention with favour. He even constructed a fifth watch, which, on the application of his son to Dr. Demainbury, was lodged in 1772 in the king's private observatory at Richmond. After ten weeks' trial it was found to have erred only four and a half seconds. The king now interposed in Harrison's behalf, but it was not until 14 June 1773 that parliament granted him the remaining amount of the reward, 8,570l. Harrison's four chronometers are preserved at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich. The success of the instrument was owing to the application of a self-compensating piece of mechanism to the balance-wheel, which contrivance, according to his provincial dialect, he called a ‘knib,’ but it is now termed the compensation-curb. Harrison died in Red Lion Square, London, on 24 March 1776, and was buried in a vault on the south side of Hampstead Church. A tomb in the churchyard was erected some years afterwards by his son, William Harrison, F.R.S. (d. 1815), and was reconstructed in 1879 at the expense of the London Company of Clockmakers. Harrison was not a member of the company. His wife Elizabeth died on 5 March 1777, aged 72. He had a musical ear, and made experiments on sound with a curious monochord of his own invention, from which he constructed a new musical scale or mechanical division of the octave, according to the proportion which the radius and diameter of a circle have respectively to the circumference. His writings are: 1. ‘An Account of the Proceedings in order to the discovery of the Longitude’ [anon.], 1763. 2. ‘A Narrative of the Proceedings relative to the discovery of the Longitude at sea … by J. Harrison's Timekeeper, subsequent to those published in 1763,’ 1765. 3. ‘The Principles of Mr. Harrison's Timekeeper, with plates of the same; published by order of the Commissioners of Longitude,’ 1767. The preface and the chapter entitled ‘Notes taken at the Discovery of Mr. Harrison's Timekeeper,’ are written by Nevil Maskelyne. 4. ‘Remarks on a Pamphlet lately published by Mr. Maskelyne under the authority of the Board of Longitude,’ 1767. 5. ‘A Description concerning such mechanism as will afford a nice or true mensuration of time, together with some Accounts of the attempts for the Discovery of the Longitude by the Moon; as also an Account of the Discovery of the Scale of Music,’ 1775. An engraved portrait of ‘Longitude Harrison,’ as he was called, accompanies a memoir in the ‘European Magazine’ for October 1789, the artist being B. Reading. His portrait also appears in Knight's ‘Portrait Gallery,’ from an engraving by P. L. Tassaert published in 1768 after a painting by T. King. 

HARRISON, JOSEPH (d. 1858?), was for some years head-gardener to Lord Wharncliffe at Wortley Hall, near Sheffield. In 1833 he started ‘The Floricultural Cabinet,’ a monthly magazine. In 1837 he left his employment to begin business as a florist at Downham in Norfolk. Not succeeding very well, he moved to Kingston in Surrey. He relinquished his editorial duties in 1855 to