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[ Grandfather Clocks ]
- HISTORY OF THE PENDULUM CLOCK -
The beginning of clock making and the eventual end of other horological devices began when the Chinese discovered a method of preventing the power of any time device from running away unchecked. What the Chinese invented became known as an escapement, and it is still an integral part of all clock making. The escapement is a small brake or check that stops the wheels of the clock regularly. Thus, the wheels cannot build up momentum and race when the clock is first wound, then go slowly as the clock runs down. This stop-and-go movement of the clock-works is quite literally what makes the clock tick.
The lantern clock was made in more or less standardized form until about 1660, when there was a change in clock making in England that had repercussions throughout Europe. Yet the man responsible for the change was not English or even working in England; it was the celebrated Dutch astronomer and physicist Christian Huygens (1629-93), who invented the pendulum clock in about 1657.
The clock were described as 'keeping an equaller time than any now made without this Regulator (examined and proved before his Highness the Lord Protector by such Doctors whose knowledge is learning without exception) and may be made to go for a week, a month, or a year, with one winding up'. The Regulator was the pendulum. The precision introduced by the pendulum coincided with the rigid religious disciplines introduced by the Puritans, and Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector, was sufficiently interested in it to approve it. Once more timekeeping had found a sponsor in religious disciplinarians.
The invention was taken up by London clockmakers in an incredibly short time, considering the fact that in those days ideas could take years to spread to a neighboring town. In about 1660 London makers invented the long case (grandfather clock, with a short pendulum of about 25 centimeters (10 inches). It stood about 1.8 meters (6 feet) high in a good quality ebonized or walnut case, which enclosed the weight. When the long pendulum, also called the Royal Pendulum because it dominated the clock, was introduced about 1670, the long case clock became taller, as well as wider.
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