The idea of using the pendulum to control the action of the clock also occurred to Galileo, and in later years, after he had lost his sight, he passed the idea down to his son, Vincent. However, it is generally conceded that the credit for introducing the pendulum and doing away with the balance lever belongs to Christian Huygens, the Dutch mathematician, whose first pendulum clock dates back to 1659.
About the same time Dr. Robert Hooke invented the balance spring which made it unnecessary to use the pendulum in portable timepieces. Prior to that watches were fitted with balance levers and they gave a great deal of trouble, because the time varied with the position in which they were carried. But the balance wheel overcame all these difficulties and made it possible for a person to carry an accurate timepiece in his vest pocket, although the early watches were very bulky mechanisms.
THE FIRST SHIP’S CHRONOMETER
The importance of having accurate timepieces aboard ship was felt as far back as the time of Columbus. When ships began to go out beyond the sight of land, it was highly important that they be equipped with some means of locating their position at sea. By noting the elevation of the sun at noon with a sextant it was possible to determine the latitude of the ship, but there was no means of determining its longitude, except by dead reckoning, that is, using a log to measure the speed of a ship, and estimating its position by calculating the number of miles it had traveled since leaving port. If ships could be provided with an accurate timepiece which would keep the same time as that of some fixed observatory, it would be possible definitely to locate the position of the ship east or west by noting how fast or slow the sun was at noon on the particular day on which the observation was taken. This use of the chronometer is common in these days, but up to 150 years ago there was no timepiece sufficiently accurate to permit a navigator to tell with any certainty just where he was.
It was John Harrison, the son of a Yorkshire carpenter, who was the first to build a chronometer worthy of the name. A prize of 10,000 pounds was offered by the British Parliament for anyone who could invent and sell a chronometer which would enable a ship to take a voyage from England to any of the West Indian islands and back and keep track of the longitude within one degree. If this could be defined within two-thirds of a degree, the prize would be 15,000 pounds. Harrison made a bid for this prize, and after years of effort and patient labor, he succeeded in being granted a trial. His son, William, was sent on a ship to Jamaica with the now celebrated chronometer, which was mounted on a large cushion. The instrument was constantly attended by the young man, its position being adjusted from time to time to suit the “lie” of the ship. When the ship was eighteen days out, the vessel was estimated by dead reckoning to be 13° 50′ west of Portsmouth, but the chronometer indicated the position as 15° 19′. The timepiece was immediately condemned as worthless, but William Harrison had not lost faith in the instrument, and insisted that if the ship continued on the same course, a certain island, if properly marked on the chart, would be seen the following day. True to the prediction, the next morning at seven o’clock the island appeared. By means of his chronometer William Harrison was able to predict the appearance of the other islands, and at the end of the voyage, which occupied sixty-one days, the chronometer was only nine seconds slow. When he returned to Portsmouth, after an absence of five months, the error of the chronometer was only one minute and five seconds, giving an error in distance of only eighteen miles, whereas thirty miles was the margin of error allowed by the prize conditions. Such accuracy seemed so incredible that the chronometer had to be tested on a second voyage, during which it was kept under lock and key and when William Harrison had to wind the instrument he was obliged to do so in the presence of two witnesses, lest he move the hand of the chronometer surreptitiously. At the end of the second voyage there was no further doubt that Harrison was fully entitled to the prize. Chronometers soon came to be used extensively, until now they are one of the most perfect of machines made by man, and operate with an accuracy that is almost incredible. Usually a ship is provided with several chronometers, so that one may be used as a check upon another. They are mounted in ball sockets and gimbal joints, so that they are not affected by the roll of the ship, but always lie in a horizontal position.
MARVELOUS PRECISION OF MODERN WATCHES
While we may well marvel at the precision of the chronometer, it is equally marvelous, if not more so, that we may equip ourselves for a few dollars with a timepiece which is so wonderfully accurate as to vary little more than a second per day. If one took the pains to regulate his watch carefully, any of the better makes could be adjusted to such accuracy.
There is nothing very mysterious about the mechanism of a watch. It consists merely of a train of gears which slow down the motions of the mainspring to a convenient speed; and these gears moreover keep the proper relation between the hour and minute and second hands. But when we reflect that a small watch possesses a tiny second hand which travels something like ten miles in a year, and that if carefully regulated it will not vary from that of another watch in the whole journey by more than six or eight inches at the most, we certainly have a reason to marvel. There are 86,400 seconds in a day, and a watch is usually arranged to make five beats per second or 432,000 per day. The interval between beats must be adjusted with such minuteness that one beat must not differ from another by 1/86000 part of a second, else the watch will register more than a second fast or slow at the end of a day. And yet watches capable of such precision are being turned out daily by the thousands. Of course, such perfection would be absolutely impossible without the use of extremely accurate machine tools. It would have been impossible as long as we had to depend upon a watchmaker to make a watch by hand.
THE PACEMAKER OF A WATCH
If we look at the works of a clock the most conspicuous feature is the rapidly oscillating balance wheel which, by the way, is the most important part of the watch, for it governs the release of the power stored up in the spring.