Pendulum clock

Pendulum clockTimekeeping in the past was often hit-or- miss. The invention of the pendulum clock ensured that things ran like clockwork. Precise pendulums Italian inventor Galileo Galilei realized that the regular Keeping the world ON TI ME swing of a pendulum was a good way to measure time, but it was Dutch mathematician CHRiSTiaan HuYGenS who made clocks start ticking with precision. His pendulum clock of 1656 counted the seconds much more accurately than previous weightdriven clocks. It was so reliable that Huygens fitted his clock with a second hand as well as minute and hour hands.

Early clocks

People have always tried to keep track of the time. More than 9,000 years ago, people used SundialS. In ancient Egypt and Babylon (modern-day Iraq), the constant drip of water was used to measure time. Mechanical clocks were invented in the 1300s, driven by falling weights, but they did not measure time accurately.

Sundials used the Sun’s position in the sky to tell the time. By the way... In addition to inventing the most accurate clock in the world, I built a telescope and discovered the rings of the planet Saturn.

It paved the way for... Starting in the 1500s,

pocket watches were carried by the wealthy, though they weren’t very accurate at first. Scottish clockmaker Alexander Bain invented the first

HOW The time a pendulum takes to swing back and forth is always the IT WO R KS same, as long as the length of the pendulum doesn’t change and it keeps swinging. In a pendulum clock, the regular swing of the pendulum is captured by the escapement. The escapement is a device that uses the energy of the regular swing of the pendulum to allow the falling weight to move the hands on the clock face. At the same time, the escapement transfers energy from a falling weight to the pendulum to keep it swinging.

Weight falls under the pull of gravity and makes the escapement wheel turn. For each swing of the pendulum, one tooth of the escapement wheel is released.

Pendulum

Marine chronometer

Pendulum clocks kept time on land, but at sea they were useless because of the repeated rocking of ships on the waves. Since navigation depended on telling time accurately, which could mean the difference between a successful voyage and a shipping disaster, governments offered a fortune in prize money to anyone who invented an accurate clock without a pendulum. In 1762, English carpenter John harrison won the British government’s prize with his Number Four marine chronometer. Did you know? Captain James Cook relied on Harrison’s marine chronometer during his 1772 voyage from the Tropics to Antarctica.

Huygens’s clock was the template for all pendulum clocks that followed. It used a falling weight to make the pendulum swing. Marine chronometers used a balance wheel and a spring instead of a pendulum.

H o w it changed the wo r l d Pendulum clocks remained the world’s most accurate clocks for 300 years. Measuring time accurately not only meant that everyone could keep time, but also gave science an essential tool for experiments and research.

QuArtz crystAls, which vibrate at a constant rate in an electrical circuit, were first used in clocks in 1927.

Atomic clocks are the most precise timekeepers in the world. The first accurate one was made in 1955 by English physicist Louis Essen.