'Escapement'

Now I am beginning to understand the basic workings of horology a little, I have seemingly stumbled upon the really important piece of the puzzle, the part that begins to hint at how a mass of microscopic cogs measures/records/distorts time...

I will try to describe my own crude understanding, with as little reference to my sources (wiki!!!) as possible, chiefly as a means of attempting to personally interpret the research and its relevance to my project...

The 'escapement' element found in most almost any modern time-keeping piece, has evolved a variety of descendants that can either be described as 'mechanical' or 'liquid'. Any timekeeping method featuring an 'escapement' can be described as a repetitve oscilliatry process (such as a swinging pendulum), as opposed to a one-way flow process (such as a water-clock or egg timer). This improvement yeilded huge gains in accuracy.

The above self reversing process is an example of a mechanical process; the reilability of an escapement depends on the quality of workmanship and the level of maintenance given. A poorly constructed or poorly maintained escapement will cause problems. The escapement must accurately convert the oscillations of the pendulum or balance wheel into rotation of the clock or watch gear train, and it must deliver enough energy to the pendulum or balance wheel to maintain its oscillation.

[World's largest pendulum clock, Shinjuku]

The crucial element in escapement design is to give just enough energy to the pendulum in order to keep it swinging, and to interfere with the free swinging of the pendulum as little as is possible. As the lubrication of the escapement ages, friction will increase, and less power will be transferred to the timing device (for example, the pendulum). If the timing device is a pendulum, this means the pendulum will swing a shorter and shorter arc. Contrary to popular opinion, the time taken for a pendulum swing is not constant regardless of the size of the swing; the swing time changes with the size of the swing. Therefore, a dirty escapement will cause inaccuracy because the arc of the pendulum swing becomes shorter (the clock will speed up). To minimize this effect, pendulum swings are kept as small as possible.

For now I think all that is crucial for me to understand is the principle, a self-reversible, repetetive, oscilliatry process. The immediate obvious [metaphorical] link to my site can be found with the coming and going of the tide. I hope the fascinating details of calibration and tuning can be re-visited once a convincing design is up and running, but for now I guess I should leave the clocks alone for a while, and get some more drawings done.

I have been [quite rightly] advised to back up my hand drawings by scanning them; once this is done it should be simple to post them chronologically to chart the project.