History
The torsion pendulum was invented by Robert Leslie in 1793. The torsion pendulum clock was first invented and patented by American Aaron Crane in 1841. He made clocks that would run up to one year on a winding. He also attempted to make precision astronomical regulator clocks based on the torsion pendulum, but only sold four.
The German Anton Harder apparently independently invented and patented the torsion clock in 1879-1880. He was inspired by watching a hanging chandelier rotate after a servant had turned it to light the candles. He formed the firm Jahresuhrenfabrik ('Year Clock Factory') and designed a clock that would run for a year, but its accuracy was bad. He sold the patent in 1884 to F. A. L. deGruyter of Amsterdam, who allowed the patent to expire in 1887. Other firms entered the market, beginning the German mass production of these clocks.
Although they were successful commercially, torsion clocks remained poor timekeepers. In 1951, Charles Terwilliger of the Horolovar Co. invented a temperature compensating suspension spring, which allowed fairly accurate clocks to be made.
Read more about this topic: Torsion Pendulum Clock
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism’s high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)
“The history of men’s opposition to women’s emancipation is more interesting perhaps than the story of that emancipation itself.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)
“I believe that history might be, and ought to be, taught in a new fashion so as to make the meaning of it as a process of evolution intelligible to the young.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–95)