Among time pieces, there is for me, none more fascinating than the pendulum clock. This is one area where design, functionality, and pure science have melded effectively. For centuries, man looked to the heavens and calculated time in estimates. When clocks were invented, they were unable to count minutes reliably, just the hours.
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The man credited with the invention of pendulum clocks was Dutch mathematician Christian Huygens in the year 1656. However, it was the great Italian genius Galileo who started studying pendulums in the early 1580s, and continued his work on perpetual motion up until about 1641. Upon the master’s death, Huygens picked where Galileo’s work left off, and finally in 1656, invented the first pendulum clock.
Hailed as the century’s greatest feat, Huygens’ pendulum clock had an error margin of less than 1 minute a day. Later on, more refinements were made that brought the margin of error down to less than 10 seconds per day.
The pendulum clock’s accuracy was further improved to just one second a day in the year 1721, when George Graham discovered how to make changes in the pendulum’s length with temperature variations.
More and more inquiring scientific minds worked to improve the pendulum. Siegmund Riefler’s pendulum clock which had a nearly free pendulum attained an accuracy of a hundredth of a second a day in 1889 and became known as the benchmark of astronomical observations.
Today, the basic structure of Pendulum clocks remain the same.
Pendulum clocks have four basic parts:
• a pendulum rod with a mass at the end
• an escapement system necessary to pass energy onto the pendulum
• a gear train by which rapid escapement rotation slows down
• an indicator system to record how often the escapement has rotated , meaning how much time has passed.
Here’s one main thing to remember: Pendulum clocks should be stationary and non-moving while operating, making it impossible to work in vehicles or other moving locations. This is because the motion and accelerations of the said vehicle will affect the Pendulum clocks’ motion and pace and could cause time inaccuracies.
