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Watches: 16th - 17th century
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The first watches, made in Nuremberg from about 1500, are spherical metal objects, about three inches in diameter, designed to hang on a ribbon round the neck. They derive from similar metal spheres used as pomanders, to hold aromatic herbs which will protect the wearer against disease or vile odours.
The first watchmakers place their somewhat primitive mechanism inside cases of this sort. A single hand set into a flat section at the base makes its way round a dial marked with the division of twelve hours.
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For their first century and more, watches are worn outside the clothes and are regarded more as jewels than as useful instruments (a comment also on their timekeeping abilities). The best of them are exquisitely decorated in enamel.
The spherical watch of this kind evolves in the late 17th century into the slimmer pocket watch, thanks largely to Christiaan Huygens. This distinguished Dutch physicist makes two important contributions to time-keeping - the pendulum clock and the spiral balance spring.
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The pendulum clock: 1656-1657
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Christiaan Huygens spends Christmas day, in the Hague in 1656, constructing a model of a clock on a new principle. The principle itself has been observed by Galileo, traditionally as a result of watching a lamp swing to and fro in the cathedral when he is a student in Pisa. Galileo later proves experimentally that a swinging suspended object takes the same time to complete each swing regardless of how far it travels.
This consistency prompts Galileo to suggest that a pendulum might be useful in clocks. But no one has been able to apply that insight, until Huygens finds that his model works.
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A craftsman in the Hague makes the first full-scale clock on this principle for Huygens in 1657. But it is in England that the idea is taken up with the greatest enthusiasm.
By 1600 London clockmakers have already developed the characteristic shape which makes best use of the new mechanism - that of the longcase clock, more affectionately known as the grandfather clock.
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The pocket watch: 1675
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Nineteen years after making his model of the pendulum clock, Huygens invents a device of equal significance in the development of the watch. It is the spiral balance, also known as the hairspring (an invention also claimed, less convincingly, by Robert Hooke). This very fine spring, coiled flat, controls the speed of oscillation of the balance wheel. For the first time it is possible to make a watch which is reasonably accurate - and slim.
Both elements are important, for the sober gentlemen of the late 17th century are less inclined than their ancestors to wear jewels round the neck. A watch which will keep the time and slip into a waistcoat pocket is what they require.
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Thomas Tompion, the greatest of English clock and watchmakers, is one of the first to apply the hairspring successfully in pocket watches (of which his workshop produces more than 6000 in his lifetime). The new accuracy of these instruments prompts an addition to the face of a watch - that of the minute hand.
The familiar watch face, with two concentric hands moving round a single dial, is at first considered confusing. There are experiments with several other arrangements of the hour and minute hand, before the design which has since been taken for granted is widely accepted.
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Chronometer: 1714-1766
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Two centuries of ocean travel, since the first European voyages of discovery, have made it increasingly important for ships' captains - whether on naval or merchant business - to be able to calculate their position accurately in any of the world's seas. With the help of the simple and ancient astrolabe, the stars will reveal latitude. But on a revolving planet, longitude is harder. You need to know what time it is, before you can discover what place it is.
The importance of this is made evident when the British government, in 1714, sets up a Board of Longitude and offers a massive £20,000 prize to any inventor who can produce a clock capable of keeping accurate time at sea.
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The terms are demanding. To win the prize a chronometer (a solemnly scientific term for a clock, first used in a document of this year) must be sufficiently accurate to calculate longitude within thirty nautical miles at the end of a journey to the West Indies. This means that in rough seas, damp salty conditions and sudden changes of temperature the instrument must lose or gain not more than three seconds a day - a level of accuracy unmatched at this time by the best clocks in the calmest London drawing rooms.
The challenge appeals to John Harrison, at the time of the announcement a 21-year-old Lincolnshire carpenter with an interest in clocks. It is nearly sixty years before he wins the money. Luckily he lives long enough to collect it.
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By 1735 Harrison has built the first chronometer which he believes approaches the necessary standard. Over the next quarter-century he replaces it with three improved models before formally undergoing the government's test. His innovations include bearings which reduce friction, weighted balances interconnected by coiled springs to minimize the effects of movement, and the use of two metals in the balance spring to cope with expansion and contraction caused by changes of temperature.
Harrison's first 'sea clock', in 1735, weighs 72 pounds and is 3 feet in all dimensions. His fourth, in 1759, is more like a watch - circular and 5 inches in diameter. It is this machine which undergoes the sea trials.
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Harrison is now sixty-seven, so his son takes the chronometer on its test journey to Jamaica in 1761. It is five seconds slow at the end of the voyage. The government argues that this may be a fluke and offers Harrison only £2500. After further trials, and the successful building of a Harrison chronometer by another craftsman (at the huge cost of £450), the inventor is finally paid the full prize money in 1773.
He has proved in 1761 what is possible, but his chronometer is an elaborate and expensive way of achieving the purpose. It is in France, where a large prize is also on offer from the Académie des Sciences, that the practical chronometer of the future is developed.
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The French trial, open to all comers, takes place in 1766 on a voyage from Le Havre in a specially commissioned yacht, the Aurore. The only chronometer ready for the test is designed by Pierre Le Roy. At the end of forty-six days, his machine is accurate to within eight seconds.
Le Roy's timepiece is larger than Harrison's final model, but it is very much easier to construct. It provides the pattern of the future. With further modifications from various sources over the next two decades, the marine chronometer in its lasting form emerges before the end of the 18th century. Using it in combination with the sextant, explorers travelling the world's oceans can now bring back accurate information of immense value to the makers of maps and charts.
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A millennium clock: 1746
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In 1746 a French clockmaker, Monsieur Passemont (his first name is not known), completes a clock which is almost certainly the first in the world to be able to take account of a new millennium. Its dials can reveal the date of the month in any year up to9999.
It is a longcase clock, in an ornate baroque casing which conceals a mechanism consisting of more than 1000 interconnecting wheels and cogs. Their related movements, as they turn at their different speeds with each swing of the pendulum, are designed to cope with the complexities of the Julian calendar. Thus, for example, one large brass wheel has the responsibility of inserting February 29 in each leap year.
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This particular wheel takes four years to complete a single revolution. When it has come full circle, it pops in the extra day. (M. Passemont decides, however, not to grapple with Gregorian refinements; the absence of February 29 in 1700, 1800 and 1900 has had to be manually achieved.)
Louis XV buys the clock in 1749, three years after its completion. It is still ticking away two and a half centuries later in the palace of Versailles. The minutiae of daily time-keeping are also adjusted by hand (the clock loses a minute a month), but Monsieur Passemont's masterpiece requires no assistance in making a significant change in the first digit of its year display - from 1 to 2, at midnight on 31 December 1999.
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This History is as yet incomplete.
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Page 3 of 3 |
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