GRAHAM, George, clock and watch-maker, the most ingenious and accurate artist in his time, was born in 1675. After his apprenticeship, Mr Tompion received him into his family, purely on account of his merit; and treated him with a kind of parental affection as long as he lived. Besides his universally acknowledged skill in his profession, he was a complete mechanic and astronomer; the great mural arch in the observatory at Greenwich was made for Dr Halley, under his immediate inspection, and divided by his own hand: and from this incomparable original, the best foreign instruments of the kind are copies made by English artists. The sector by which Dr Bradley first discovered two new motions in the fixed stars, was of his invention and fabric: and when the French academicians were sent to the north to ascertain the figure of the earth, Mr Graham was thought the fittest person in Europe to supply them with instruments; those
who went to the south were not so well furnished. He was for many years a member of the Royal Society, to which he communicated several ingenious and important discoveries; and regarded the advancement of science more than the accumulation of wealth. He died in 1751.
GRAHAM'S DYKE. See ANTONINUS'S WALL. GRAIN, corn of all sorts, as barley, oats, rye, &c. See CORN, WHEAT, &c.
GRAIN is also the name of a small weight, the twentieth part of a scruple in apothecaries weight, and the twenty-fourth of a pennyweight troy.
A grain-weight of gold-bullion is worth two-pence, and that of silver but half a farthing.
GRAIN also denotes the component particles of stones and metals, the veins of wood, &c. Hence cross-grained, or against the grain, means contrary to the fibres of wood, &c.