Vernon Harrison

Vernon George Wentworth Harrison (b. 14. March 1912 in Warwickshire, d. 14. October 2001) was a former president of the Royal Photographic Society, and a professional "research worker of disputed documents".

Harrison was born in Sutton Coldfield, Warwickshire, England in March 1912, to a schoolteacher father. Harrison was educated at Bishop Vesey's Grammar School, before reading Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics at the University of Birmingham. Subsequently, he undertook three years of postgraduate research in the Physics Department, studying in particular "the use of photography and photomicrography as recording media."

Obtaining his PhD, Harison was briefly employed in the London laboratories of the Printing & Allied Trades Research Association (PATRA) as a research physicist, shortly before war broke out, and he took on a role at the Ministry of Supply. PATRA's records and equipment was destroyed in air raids on London, and new labs south of London in Leatherfield only opened in 1947, at which point Harrison began work "on the optical properties of paper, color printing, and the quality of halftone reproduction". In 1957, he was promoted to the position of Director of Research, finding himself responsible for staff by then numbering around 120.

In 1967, he joined Thos. De La Rue & Co. (printer of banknotes, postage stamps, , passports, etc.) as Research Manager in their Maidenhead research centre. Part of his – and the centre's – role was "to study the methods of counterfeiters and forgers and to devise methods of improving the security of the Company's products". Developing an interest in forgeries of all kinds, upon his retirement in 1977, Harrison set himself up in a private, independent capacity to examine suspect and questionable documents for all sides of the legal system – defence and prosecution – swiftly becoming "used to giving evidence in Court and submitting to cross-examination".

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