improved watches. But a defect still remained, namely, the influence of temperature upon the hair-spring of the balance-wheel. Many attempts were made to provide a remedy. John Harrison proposed a curb, so arranged that alterations of temperature caused unequal expansion in two pieces of metal, and thus actuated an arm which moved and mechanically altered the length of the hair-spring, thus compensating the effect of its altered elasticity. But the best solution of the problem was ultimately proposed by Pierre le Roy (1717–1785) and perfected by Thomas Earnshaw (1749–1829). This was to diminish the inertia of the balance-wheel in proportion to the increase of temperature, by means of the unequal expansion of the metals composing the rim.
Invention in watches was greatly stimulated by the need of a good timepiece for finding longitudes at sea, and many successive rewards were offered by the government for watches which would keep accurate time and yet be able to bear the rocking motion of a ship. The difficulty ended by the invention of the chronometer, which was so perfected towards the early part of the 19th century as to have even now undergone but little change of form. In fact the only great triumph of later years has been the invention of watch-making machinery, whereby the price is so lowered that an excellent watch (in a brass case) can now be purchased for about £2 and a really accurate time-keeper for about £18.
A modern watch consists of a case and framework containing the four essential parts of every timepiece, namely, a mainspring and apparatus for winding it up, a train of wheels with hands and a face, an escapement and a balance-wheel and hair-spring. We shall describe these in order.
The Mainspring.—As has been said, the mainspring of an old-fashioned watch was provided with a drum and fusee so as to equalize its action on the train. An arrangement was provided to prevent over winding, consisting of a hook which when the chain was nearly wound up was pushed aside so as to engage a pin, and thus prevent further winding (see fig. 1). Another arrangement for watches without a fusee, called a Geneva stop, consists of a wheel with one tooth affixed to the barrel arbour, working into another with only four or five teeth. This allows the barrel arbour only to be turned round four or five times.
The "going-barrel," which is fitted to most modern watches, contains no fusee, but the spring is delicately made to diminish in size from one end to the other, and it is wound up for only a few turns, so that the force derived from it does not vary very substantially. The unevenness of drive is in modern watches sought to be counteracted by the construction of the escapement and balance-wheel.
Watches used formerly to be wound with a separate key. They are now wound by a key permanently fixed to the case. The depression of a small knob gears the winding key with the hands so as to enable them to be set. With this contrivance watches are well protected against the entry of dust and damp.
Watch Escapements.—The escapements that have come into practical use are—(i) the old vertical escapement, now disused; (2) the lever, very much the most common in English watches; (3) the horizontal or cylinder, which is equally common in foreign watches, though it was of English invention; (4) the duplex, which used to be more in fashion for first-rate watches than it is now; and (5) the detached or chronometer escapement, so called because it is always used in marine chronometers.
The vertical escapement is simply the original clock escapement
adapted to the position of the wheels in a watch and the balance,
Fig. 3.
in the manner exhibited in fig. 3. As it
requires considerable thickness in the
watch, is inferior in going to all the others
and is no cheaper than the level escapement
can now be made, it has gone out of
use.
The lever escapement, as it is now universally
made, was brought into use late in the
l8th century by Thomas Mudge. Fig. 4
shows its action. The position of the lever with reference to the pallets
is immaterial in principle, and is only a question of convenience in
the arrangement; but it is generally such as we have given it.
The principle is the same as in the dead-beat clock escapement,
with the advantage that there is no friction on the dead faces of the
pallets beyond what is necessary for locking. The reason why this
friction cannot be avoided with a pendulum is that its arc of vibration
is so small that the requisite depth of intersection cannot be got
between the two circles described by the end S of the lever and any
pin in the pendulum which would work into it; whereas, in a watch,
the pin P, which is set in a cylinder on the verge of the balance, does
not generally slip out of the nick in the end of the lever until the
balance has got 15° past its middle position. The pallets are undercut
a little, as it is called, i.e. the dead faces are so sloped as to
give a little recoil the wrong way, or slightly to resist the unlocking,
because otherwise there would be a risk that a shake of the watch
Fig. 4.
would let a tooth escape while the pin is disengaged
from the lever. There is also a further
provision added for safety. In the cylinder
which carries the impulse pin P there is a
notch just in front of P, into which the other
pin S on the lever fits as they pass; but when
the notch has got past the cylinder it would
prevent the lever from returning, because the
safety-pin S cannot pass except through the
notch, which is only in the position for letting it
pass at the same time that the impulse-pin is
engaged in the lever. The pallets in a lever
escapement (except bad and cheap ones) are
always jewelled, and the scape-wheel is of brass.
The staff of the lever also has jewelled pivot-holes
in expensive watches, and the scape-wheel has in all good
ones. The holes for the balance-pivots are now always jewelled.
The scape-wheel in this and most of the watch escapements generally
beats five times in a second, in large chronometers four times; and
the wheel next to the scape-wheel carries the seconds-hand.
Fig. 5 is a plan of the horizontal or cylinder escapement, cutting
through the cylinder, which is on the verge of the balance, at the
level of the tops of the teeth of the escape-wheel; for the triangular
pieces A, B are not flat projections in the same plane as the teeth,
but are raised on short stems above the plane of the wheel; and still
Fig. 5.
more of the cylinder than the portion
shown at ACD is cut away where the
wheel itself has to pass. The author of
this escapement was G. Graham, and it
resembles his dead escapements in clocks
in principle more than the lever escapement
does, though much less in appearance,
because in this escapement there is
the dead friction of the teeth against the
cylinder, first on the outside, as here represented,
and then on the inside, as shown
by the dotted lines, during the whole
vibration of the balance, except that portion which belongs to the
impulse. The impulse is given by the oblique outside edges Aa, Bb
of the teeth against the edges A, D of the cylinder alternately. The
portion of the cylinder which is cut away at the point of action is
about 30° less than the semicircle. The cylinder itself is made either
of steel or ruby, and, from the small quantity of it which is left at
the level of the wheel, it is very delicate; and probably this has been
the main reason why, although it is an English invention, it has been
most entirely abandoned by the English watchmakers in favour of the
lever, which was originally a French invention, though very much
improved by Mudge, for before his invention the lever had a rack or
portion of a toothed wheel on its end, working into a pinion on the
balance verge, and consequently it was affected by the dead friction,
and that of this wheel and pinion besides. This used to be called the
rack lever, and Mudge's the detached lever; but, the rack lever being
now quite obsolete, the word "detached" has become confined to
the chronometer, to which it is more appropriate, as will be seen
presently. The Swiss watches have almost universally the horizontal
escapement. It is found that—for some reason which is apparently
unknown, as the rule certainly does not hold in cases seemingly
analogous—a steel scape-wheel acts better in this escapement than
a brass one, although in some other cases steel upon steel, or even
upon a ruby, very soon throws off a film of rust, unless they are kept
well oiled, while brass and steel, or stone, will act with scarcely any
oil at all, and in some cases with none.
The duplex escapement (fig. 6) is probably so called because there
is a double set of teeth in the scape-wheel—the long ones (like those
Fig. 6.
of the lever escapement in shape) for
locking only, and short ones (or rather
upright pins on the rim of the wheel) for
giving the impulse to the pallet P on the
verge of the balance. It is a single-beat
escapement; i.e. the balance only receives
the impulse one way, or at every alternate
beat, as in the chronometer escapement.
When the balance is turning in the
direction marked by the arrow, and arrives
at the position in which the dotted tooth
b has its point against the triangular notch
V, the tooth end slips into the notch, and,
as the verge turns farther round, the tooth
goes on with it till at last it escapes
when the tooth has got into the position
A; and by that time the long tooth or
pallet which projects from the verge has
moved from p to P, and just come in front of the pin T, which stands
on the rim of the scape-wheel, and which now begins to push against
P, and so gives the impulse until it also escapes when it has arrived
at t; and the wheel is then stopped by the next tooth B having got
into the position b, with its point resting against the verge, and there
is dead friction between them, and this friction is lessened by the
