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The Instability Of Verge-Foliot Clocks In Contrast With The Isochronicity Of Pendulum Clocks: A Study Of Verge-Foliot Kinematics, Aaron Seth Blumenthal

Theses and Dissertations

The tower clocks of Europe starting in the 13th century CE employed a verge-foliot mechanism, which was low in both precision and accuracy due to the sensitivity of frictional losses in the system. The pendulum and Huygens’ introduction of the Theory of Involutes is shown to be a mechanism with a linear relationship to frictional losses in the system, instead of the non-linear relationship between frictional losses in verge-foliot mechanisms. The isochrone nature of vibrations of the pendulum are discussed in contrast to the variance in oscillation seen in verge-foliots. The introduction of the pendulum resulted in an improvement of …