Memoirs of the life of David Rittenhouse, LLD. F.R.S., late president of the American Philosophical Society, &c. : $b interspersed with various notices of many distinguished men : with an appendix, containing sundry philosophical and other papers, most of which have not hitherto been publishedBarton, William
History
Memoirs of the life of David Rittenhouse, LLD. F.R.S., late president of the American Philosophical Society, &c. : $b interspersed with various notices of many distinguished men : with an appendix, containing sundry philosophical and other papers, most of which have not hitherto been published
In the library-hall of the Philadelphia Library-Company, is one of the
clocks made by that artist, having this inscription engraven on its
face, “_Johannes Fromanteel, Londini, fecit_;” but without any date.
This clock was a donation to the library-company, in the year 1804, by
Mr. Samuel Hudson, of Philadelphia, whose ancestor purchased it at an
auction in London, after the restoration of king Charles II. The
traditional account of it is, that it belonged, originally, to the
Cromwell family; and, when presented, was said to be one hundred and
forty years old: but it could not have been the property of the
protector, Cromwell, the time of whose death was between three and
four years anterior to Fromanteel’s construction of a pendulum-clock.
Footnote 97:
Besides the testimony of so distinguished an astronomer as Mr. de
Zach, already given, respecting the very great accuracy to which
time-keepers have been brought, the following translation, taken from
what the celebrated Lalande has said in his treatise _Des Horloges
Astronomiques_, (in the second volume of his _Astronomie_,) furnishes
some curious and interesting facts on that subject.
“Short (the mathematical instrument maker,) upon the occasion of the
transit of mercury over the sun observed in 1753, assures us that he
had found by many observations, that his clock had not varied more
than one second, from the 22d of February to the 6th of May (_Philos.
Trans._ 1753, p. 200;) so that, with a like pendulum, it is possible
to obtain an exactness which, till this time, was thought incredible.
There are English astronomers who have assured me,” continues Lalande,
“that pendulum-clocks have been made which did not vary more than
five″ in a year:[97a] but that does not appear to me to be yet
established as a fact; the oils that one is obliged to use in them are
sufficient, by the change of consistency they undergo, to prevent such
preciseness. The count de Bruhl, a great amateur and a perfect
connoisseur also, on the subject of time-pieces, shewed me in London a
diary of the going of two pendulums of Mudge, one of the most
celebrated clock-makers in London: in one, there was a difference of
half a second a day, between winter and summer; and in the other a
second. Mr. Aubert has a pendulum made by Shelton, which varies also
nearly a second in the day, in extreme seasons. Picard, in 1671, had a
clock which did not lose a second in two months. But, whatever may
have been, since that period, the skill of the clock-makers of Paris,
we cannot obtain such exactness, but by mere accident and an equality
of temperature in the atmosphere that is very rare: now, the
correctness of our clocks is a necessary consequence of their
principles; but these do not go so far. Mr. Emery has observed two
clocks beat the same second, during three months; they were, however,
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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