Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
The verge (or crown wheel) escapement is the earliest known type of mechanical escapement, the mechanism in a mechanical clock that controls its rate by allowing the gear train to advance at regular intervals or 'ticks'. Verge escapements were used from the late 13th century until the mid 19th century in clocks and pocketwatches.
The first mechanical escapement, the verge escapement, was invented in medieval Europe during the 13th century and was the crucial innovation that led to the development of the mechanical clock. The design of the escapement has a large effect on a timepiece's accuracy, and improvements in escapement design drove improvements in time measurement ...
The accuracy of the pendulum clock was increased by the invention of the anchor escapement in 1657 by Robert Hooke, which quickly replaced the primitive verge escapement in pendulum clocks. The first tower clock with the new escapement was the Wadham College Clock, built at Wadham College, Oxford, UK, in 1670, probably by clockmaker Joseph ...
The first clock known to strike regularly on the hour, a clock with a verge and foliot mechanism, is recorded in Milan in 1336. [96] By 1341, clocks driven by weights were familiar enough to be able to be adapted for grain mills, [97] and by 1344 the clock in London's Old St Paul's Cathedral had been replaced by one with an escapement. [98]
The first thing to be improved was the escapement. The verge escapement was replaced in quality watches by the cylinder escapement, invented by Thomas Tompion in 1695 and further developed by George Graham in 1715. [17] In Britain a few quality watches went to the duplex escapement, invented by Jean Baptiste Dutertre in 1724. The advantage of ...
A string-suspended verge would reduce friction greatly and make the clock run more evenly; the foliot swings at an angle and not exactly horizontally; the escapement wheel and the pallets of the verge do not engage very exactly. This leads to the verge pallets "falling" onto the escapement teeth causing a lot of vibration in the verge and foliot.
The escapement is a mechanism in a mechanical clock that maintains the swing of the pendulum by giving it a small push each swing, and allows the clock's wheels to advance a fixed amount with each swing, moving the clock's hands forward. The anchor escapement was so named because one of its principal parts is shaped vaguely like a ship's anchor.
The volume on clockmaking contained highly detailed instructions for the production of a weight-driven, striking clock with a verge escapement controlled by a foliot. [8] Relatively high literacy rates and an enthusiastic, book-lending society contributed greatly to the work's widespread readership. [9]