The Discoverers (Knowledge Series Book 2)

by Daniel J. Boorstin

The force that moved the arm that struck the bell was provided by falling weights. What made the machine truly novel was the device that prevented the free fall of the weights and interrupted their drop into regular intervals. The sundial had shown the uninterrupted movement of the sun’s shadow, and the sandglass operated by the free-falling of water or sand. What gave this new machine a longer duration and measured off the units was a simple enough device, which has remained almost uncelebrated in history. It was called an escapement, since it was a way of regulating the “escape” of the motive power into the clock, and it held revolutionary import for human experience. With the simplicity of the greatest inventions, the “escapement” was nothing more than an arrangement that would regularly interrupt the force of a falling weight. The interruptor was so designed that it would alternately check and then release the force of the weight on the moving machinery of the clock. This was the basic invention that made all modern clocks possible. Now a weight falling only a short distance could keep a clock going for hours as the regular downward pull of the falling weights was translated into the interrupted, staccato movement of the clock’s machinery.