CLOCK. 
than any other manj is evidently most just, 
Which asserts that the clock is not the in- 
vention Of any one man, but an assemblage 
of successive inventions, each of which is 
worthy of a separate contriver. 1. Wheel- 
work, which was known in the time of Ar- 
chimedes ; 2. the application of the weight 
as a maintaining power ; 3. the use of the 
fly as a regulator ; 4. the ratchet wheel 
and click ; 5. the substitution of the ba- 
lance for the fly ; and the escapement, 
which was necessarily introduced at the 
same time ; 6. the application of the dial 
and hands ; and 7. the addition of the strik- 
ing part. 
In the clock which was placed in a tower 
of the palace of , Charles V. in 1364, by 
Henry de Wick, the regulating part con- 
sisted of a balance, which vibrated back- 
wards and forwards by an escapement like 
that of common watches ; it had no balance 
spring, but this deficiency was in some 
measure supplied by the mode in which it 
was made to move ; its arbor was vertical, 
and instead of resting on its lower point, 
was suspended from above by a double 
cord, or cat-gut ; the twisting of this cord, 
caused by each vibration, tended to raise 
the balance, and its own weight made it 
descend again, and at the same time turn 
ronnd in the opposite direction, when the 
impulse of the first pallet ceased to act on 
it. The balance was very heavy, as weight 
was necessary to make it act in the above 
manner ; and this has caused the mode of 
its iteration to be mistaken by many, who 
supposed, that the cord was merely added 
to prevent the great friction on the lower 
end of the arbor, which the weight of the 
balance would cause. 
The introduction of the spiral spring, as 
a first mover, instead of a weight, took 
place about the beginning of the sixteenth 
century. Mr. Peckett, of Old Compton- 
street, had one of this construction, which 
from an inscription on it in the Bohemian 
language, was made by Jacob Lech, of 
Prague, in the year 1525. 
Clocks with the balances above describ- 
ed, imperfect as they were, gave, however, 
some assistance to astronomy. Tycho 
Brahe had four of them, but of such a 
massy construction, that a single wheel in 
one of them which had but three wheels, 
contained 1200 teeth, and was three feet 
in diameter. These clocks continued in 
use till about 1650, when a new aera in 
the art commenced, by the application of 
the pendulum as a regulator. 
YOL. II. 
Bernard, one of the professors of astro- 
nomy at Oxford, in the last century, has 
asserted that the Arabians used pendulums 
in astronomy long before the above period, 
(as we know that Ricoli, Tycho Brahe, 
Langrenus, Vendelin, Mersenne, Kircher, 
Hevelius, Monton, and Galileo himself did.) 
in a detached state; but we do not find 
that any of them used it in conjunction 
with wheel work. According to professor 
Venturi, Sanctorius applied a pendulum 
to clockwork sometime before tlie year 
1625 ; and Becker mentions a native of 
Switzerland, called Juste Birge, who did 
the same in 1597 ; but these experiments, 
if really made, never were sufficiently 
made public to benefit the world. 
The person to whom mankind is really 
indebted for bringing this important dis- 
covery into universal notice, is the cele- 
brated Christian Huygens, of Zuylichem, 
who in his excellent treatise “ De Horologio 
Oscillatorio,” has described the construction 
of a pendulum clock, and proved that he 
made one before the year 1658. 
Galileo is supposed to have claims to 
the priority of the invention of the mode 
of applying the pendulum to clock-work, 
and his son Vincentio Galilei is reported 
(Exper. del Acad, del Cimento) to have 
made a pendulum clock so early as in 1649, 
at Venice, suggested by his father’s discove- 
ries. But it is thought that Huygens’ 
method was much more masterly and scien- 
tific ; and that the world is not under any 
obligation to Galileo for the invention ; for, 
if he really made it, the manner of perform- 
ing it'was kept so secret, that Huygens him- 
self never heard of it, though one of the 
most philosophical characters of his time. 
There has another claimant appeared of 
late years for the honour of the invention, 
on the authority of Mr. Thomas Grignon, 
of Russel-street, Covent Garden, who pro- 
duces a well authenticated writing of his 
father’s, to prove his having seen the in- 
scription on the great clock, formerly fixed 
in the turret of St. Paul's, Covent Garden, 
which ascertained that it was made by 
Richard Harris, of London, in 1641. This 
clock was regulated by a long pendulum ; 
and, if the above information is correct, 
must have Ijeen one of the first made, as 
it precedes that said to have been con- 
structed by Vincentio Galilei by eight 
years. Mr. Grignon senior was a very 
ingenious mechanist, and a man of excel- 
lent character, and brought to perfection 
the horizontal principle in watches, and tlie 
P 
