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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 existing clocks of the time, which used the verge escapement with a crude balance wheel, were very inaccurate. The pendulum, due to its isochronism, could be a much better timekeeper. His son Vincenzio began building a clock, but both he and Galileo died before it was completed.
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enough to be able to be adapted for grain mills, [97] and by 1344 the clock in London's Old St Paul's Cathedral had been replaced by one with an escapement.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]
Animation of an anchor escapement, one of the most common escapements used in pendulum clocks . The escapement is a mechanical linkage that converts the force from the clock's wheel train into impulses that keep the pendulum swinging back and forth. It is the part that makes the "ticking" sound in a working pendulum clock.
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 early clocks mentioned, the Villard de Honnecourt and Salisbury Cathedral clocks, used verge and foliot. In contrast, the use of verge escapements with pendulums was quickly superseded (within about 50 years) by the anchor escapement, as the article says. A casual reading of the article might give the impression that the only important use ...