Galileo conceptualises refined escapement Around 1637, Italian scientist Galileo Galilei conceptualised a mechanism that would keep a pendulum swinging by pushing it along.[1] This ‘escapement’ could be applied to a clock. By Galileo’s time, most clocks used a verge escapement and foliate balance, which were not true oscillators and inaccurate. Galileo’s improved pinwheel escapement design was a leap forward as it ensured regular oscillations in theory. In his seventies and totally blind, Galileo described the escapement to his son Vincenzio, who drew a sketch of his father’s description and began constructing a prototype. Unfortunately, both he and his father died before the model was completed, but the sketch survives. In 1946, Danish designer and scientific instrument maker, Lauritis Christian Eichner, created an iron model of Galileo’s escapement, which is coming soon to Clocktime. End Note [1] Sobel 2011, 36–37. For more on Galileo’s famed observation of a pendulum, see Wooten 2010, 18–21. References Sobel, D. 2011. Longitude: The true story of a lone genius who solved the greatest scientific problem of his time. London: Harper Perennial. Wooten, D. 2010. Galileo: Watcher of the skies. New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press. Further Reading Johnstone, A. ‘Galileo and the pendulum clock.’ https://www.cs.rhul.ac.uk/~adrian/timekeeping/galileo/. Image Credit Galileo's pendulum clock (first drawing). V900/0003 Science Photo Library
