As it was easy safely to convert the old form of balance into pendulum
form, with hanging weight or weights, this was frequently done. So
frequently, in fact, that very few of the old balance movements remain.
See illustration (p. 57) of lantern clock with weights and pendulum.
With the advent of the "royal" or long pendulum, the domestic clock
came into being.
We now arrive at the first period of the English domestic clock, and
from this point a fairly definite record of styles and changes can be
made.
=The Domestic Clock.=--This may be said to be the clock in use in
a great house, apart from the cathedral or church clock, the turret
clock, or the more public clock common to the gaze of everybody.
The nobility employed, on the Continent and in this country, great
clockmakers to produce these new scientific timekeepers for use in
their private apartments. But there came another phase when the clock
visible to the dependent was supplanted by more delicate mechanism of
greater value and of richer ornamentation.
=The Personal Clock.=--This was the watch. It was carried on the
person. It was the gift of a lover to his mistress. It was a rich and
rare jewel of scientific construction, set in crystal, embellished with
enamel and other rich decoration. In a measure it supplanted the clock
and drove it on to a lower plane.
It demanded craftsmanship of the highest character to create these
masterpieces of horology, and the art has been continued in a separate
stream to that of clockmaking up to the present day. The watch is not
the small clock, nor is the clock the large watch. Whatever may have
been their common origin, each has developed on lines essentially
proper for the technique. As the clock has developed in mechanical
perfection, so the watch has similarly kept in parallel progress
towards the same ideal, that of the perfect timekeeper.
A long succession of mechanical inventions is attached to the clock,
and similarly the watch has demanded equal genius till both arrive at
modernity.
=The Dawn of Science.=--The mid-seventeenth century the post-Bacon
period, when Newton became President of the Royal Society, may be said
to be the dawn of science in this country. The Aristotelian method of
analysis and the practical experiment set men's minds into scientific
channels. The scientific clockmaker was the product of this period of
restless activity. Science was in leading-strings. Prince Rupert's
Drops, so familiar now, were a scientific wonder. Bishop Wilkins
and Evelyn, Locke and Dr. Harvey, were all, from different points,
attempting to unravel the secrets of nature. The Tudor Age had opened
the New World; the next century was left to discover the untravelled
paths of science and mechanism. Invention was being suckled by
Curiosity. Invention only came to manhood in the nineteenth century.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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