Memorials
Harrison died on his eighty-third birthday and is buried in the graveyard of St John's Church, Hampstead along with his second wife Elizabeth and their son William. His tomb was restored in 1879 by the Worshipful Company of Clockmakers even though Harrison had never been a member of the Company.
Harrison's last home was in Red Lion Square in London, now a short walk from the Holborn Underground station. There is a plaque dedicated to Harrison on the wall of Summit House in the south side of the square. A memorial tablet to Harrison was unveiled in Westminster Abbey on 24 March 2006 finally recognising him as a worthy companion to his friend George Graham and Thomas Tompion, "The Father of English Watchmaking", who are both buried in the Abbey. The memorial shows a meridian line (line of constant longitude) in two metals to highlight Harrison's most widespread invention, the bimetallic strip thermometer. The strip is engraved with its own longitude of 0 degrees, 7 minutes and 35 seconds West.
The Corpus Clock in Cambridge, unveiled in 2008, is an homage to Harrison's work. Harrison's grasshopper escapement – sculpted to resemble an actual grasshopper – is the clock's defining feature, even though the appellation 'grasshopper' is a romantic 19th century conceit. Harrison himself probably would have accurately defined it as an "isochronal anchor escapement with pivoted pallets".
Read more about this topic: John Harrison
Famous quotes containing the word memorials:
“My titillations have no foot-notes
And their memorials are the phrases
Of idiosyncratic music.”
—Wallace Stevens (18791955)
“Our public monuments are memorials to the Enlightenment.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Let these memorials of built stone musics
enduring instrument, of many centuries of
patient cultivation of the earth, of English
verse ...”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)