- 
of measuring Time at Sea. 59 
4, of Plate ITI.) having six radii placed without the frame: 
it is by means of this wheel that the escapement works. 
With regard to the hour wheel, or that which carries the 
hour hands, H, (Plate IV.) it has 48 teeth, and is conducted 
by a lanthorn pinion of four, which being adjusted on the 
axis of the centre wheel m, carries the minute hand e (fig. 7, 
Plate I.) on its extremity formed into a square. 
By this disposition, the hour circle, and those of minutes 
and seconds, have each one its centre, as we may see in 
Plate IV. I have preferred this, although the hour hand 
necessarily turns to the left, because it suppresses one wheel 
and some slight friction*; for we can never render a 
watch destined for the sea sufficiently simple, the acci- 
dents which may happen to an instrument being always in 
the ratio of the number of pieces that compose it. 
Moreover, in this wheel-work, the simplicity of which is 
evident, all the wheels are horizoutal, and the escapement 
wheel moves on the extremity of its pivot; whence arises_ 
great freedom: in the moving part. 
Article II. 
Continuation of the description of the new watch: means by 
which the friction has been reduced to the least value, ly 
rendering the regulator as free and as powerful as it 
can be. 
This regulator or balance vvvv (fig. 7, Plate I, and fig. 
1 and 6, Plate III.) is of steel. It weighs about five ounces; 
jt is four inches diameter, and is mounted on an arbor AA 
(fig. 7, Plate I. and fig. 6, Plate III.) of about five inches. 
A frame of copper rxxa, &c. (fig. 6, Plate IIT.), to which 
is adapted the movement, holds this balance horizontally, 
suspended by the upper extremity of its arbor, by means of 
a very fine harpsichord wire F, which is attached to its 
whose length is about three inches, and forms the same 
vertical right line as 4he axis of the arbor. 
That this balance may turn very freely on its axis, each 
of its pivots is retained, with the proper play, between four 
* Mr. Earnshaw has made this alteration in some of the clocks at the Royal 
Observatory at Greenwich.—T. S. E, 
rollers, 
