Huygens attempted to correct these irregularities in the verge escapement in watches by amplifying the arc of oscillation of the balance itself.  He constructed for that purpose a pirouette escapement shown in Fig. 155, in which a toothed wheel A adjusted upon the verge V serves as an intermediary between that and the balance B, upon the axis of which was fixed a pinion D.  By this method he obtained extended arcs of vibration, but the vibrations were, as a consequence, very slow, and they still remained subject to all the irregularities arising from the variation in the motive power as well as from shocks.  A little later, but about the same epoch, a certain Dr. Hook, of the Royal Society of London, contrived another arrangement by means of which he succeeded, so it appeared to him at least, in greatly diminishing the influence of shock upon the escapement; but many other, perhaps greater, inconveniences caused his invention to be speedily rejected.  We shall give our readers an idea of what Dr. Hook’s escapement was like.

[Illustration:  Fig. 158]

[Illustration:  Fig. 159]

On looking at Fig. 156 we see the escape wheel R, which was flat and in the form of a ratchet; it was provided with two balances. B B engaging each other in teeth, each one carrying a pallet P P’ upon its axis; the axes of the three wheels being parallel.  Now, in our drawing, the tooth a of the escape wheel exerts its lift upon the pallet P’; when this tooth escapes the tooth b will fall upon the pallet P’ on the opposite side, a recoil will be produced upon the action of the two united balances, then the tooth b will give its impulse in the contrary direction.  Considerable analogy exists between this form of escapement and that shown in Fig. 153 and intended for clocks.  This was the busy era in the watchmaker’s line.  All the great heads were pondering upon the subject and everyone was on the qui vive for the newest thing in the art.

In 1674 Huygens brought out the first watch having a regulating spring in the form of a spiral; the merit of this invention was disputed by the English savant, Dr. Hook, who pretended, as did Galileo, in the application of the pendulum, to have priority in the idea.  Huygens, who had discovered and corrected the irregularities in the oscillations of the pendulum, did not think of those of the balance with the spiral spring.  And it was not until the close of the year 1750 that Pierre Le Roy and Ferdinand Berthoud studied the conditions of isochronism pertaining to the spiral.

AN INVENTION THAT CREATED MUCH ENTHUSIASM.

However that may be, this magnificent invention, like the adaptation of the pendulum, was welcomed with general enthusiasm throughout the scientific world:  without spiral and without pendulum, no other escapement but the recoil escapement was possible; a new highway was thus opened to the searchers.  The water clocks (clepsydrae) and the hour glasses disappeared completely, and the timepieces which had till then only marked the hours, having been perfected up to the point of keeping more exact time, were graced with the addition of another hand to tell off the minutes.