He soon obtained a considerable knowledge of what had
been done in clocks and watches, and was able to do not only what
the best professional workers had done, but to strike out
entirely new lights in the clock and watch-making business. He
found out a method of diminishing friction by adding a joint to
the pallets of the pendulum, whereby they were made to work in
the nature of rollers of a large radius, without any sliding, as
usual, upon the teeth of the wheel. He constructed a clock on
the recoiling principle, which went perfectly, and never lost a
minute within fourteen years. Sir Edmund Denison Beckett says
that he invented this method in order to save himself the trouble
of going so frequently to oil the escapement of a turret clock,
of which he had charge; though there were other influences at
work besides this.
But his most important invention, at this early period of his
life, was his compensation pendulum. Every one knows that metals
expand with heat and contract by cold. The pendulum of the clock
therefore expanded in summer and contracted in winter, thereby
interfering with the regular going of the clock. Huygens had by
his cylindrical checks removed the great irregularity arising
from the unequal lengths of the oscillations; but the pendulum
was affected by the tossing of a ship at sea, and was also
subject to a variation in weight, depending on the parallel of
latitude.
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