Pendulum Clocks

A pendulum clock is a clock that uses a pendulum, a swinging weight, as its time base. From its invention in 1656 by Christiaan Huygens until the 1930s, the pendulum clock was the world's most accurate timekeeper, accounting for its widespread use. more...

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Pendulum clocks must be stationary to operate; any motion or accelerations will affect the motion of the pendulum, causing inaccuracies, so other mechanisms must be used in portable timepieces. They are now kept mostly for their decorative and antique value.

History

The pendulum clock was invented and patented by Christiaan Huygens in 1656, inspired by investigations of pendulums by Galileo Galilei beginning around 1602. Galileo discovered the key property that makes pendulums useful timekeepers: isochronism, which means that the period of swing of a pendulum is approximately the same for different sized swings. Galileo had the idea for a pendulum clock in 1637, partly constructed by his son in 1649, but they didn't live to finish it. The introduction of the pendulum, the first harmonic oscillator used in timekeeping, increased the accuracy of clocks enormously, from about 15 minutes per day to 15 seconds per dayleading to their rapid spread as existing clocks were retrofitted with pendulums.

These early clocks, due to their verge escapements, had wide pendulum swings of up to 100°. Huygens discovered that wide swings made the pendulum inaccurate, causing its period, and thus the rate of the clock, to vary with changes in the driving force. Clockmakers' realization that only pendulums with small swings of a few degrees are isochronous motivated the invention of the anchor escapement in 1670, which reduced the pendulum's swing to 4°-6°. This allowed the clock's case to accommodate longer, slower pendulums, which needed less power and caused less wear on the movement. The 'seconds' pendulum (also called the Royal pendulum) in which each swing takes one second, which is about one metre (39.1 in) long, became widely used. The long narrow clocks built around these pendulums, first made by William Clement around 1680, became known as grandfather clocks. The increased accuracy resulting from these developments caused the minute hand, previously rare, to be added to clock faces beginning around 1690.

Until the 1800s, clocks were made by individual craftsmen and were very expensive. The rich ornamentation of clocks of this period indicates their value as status symbols of the wealthy. By the 1800s, factory production of clock parts gradually made pendulum clocks affordable by middle class families.

Read more at Wikipedia.org