TY - BOOK AU - Woodward,Philip TI - My own right time: an exploration of clockwork design SN - 0198565224 PY - 1995/// CY - Oxford, New York PB - Oxford University Press KW - Clocks and watches KW - Design and construction KW - fast KW - Clocks KW - Making KW - United Kingdom KW - Precision KW - Wall clock KW - Pendulum Science N1 - Includes bibliographical references (pages 158-160) and index; Machine derived contents note: Foreword -- Author's preface -- 1. A horologist in the making -- 2. Theory and practice -- 3. Choosing an escapement -- 4. Echoes of Hope-Jones -- 5. Harrison and Congreve -- 6. Silence for a cellist -- 7. Going without gears -- 8. Disturbed harmonic motion -- 9. The phase circle -- 10. The Shortt free pendulum -- 11. Aiming too high -- 12. W5 -- 13. Error correction -- 14. Noise modulation -- 15. The enigma of flicker noise -- 16. Wallman's conjecture -- 17. Clockwork with a difference -- Bibliography -- Glossary -- Appendix N2 - The pendulum is a constant source of interest to scientists. Great and well-known inventors such as Galileo, Huygens, and Kelvin all devised mechanisms to maintain its even oscillations. Others such as John Harrison, Lord Grimthorpe, and William Shortt are known only in horological circles but contributed as much or more over three centuries. By writing a personal account of his own inventions and achievements in horology the author involves the reader in the history of precision time-keeping before the advent of quartz crystals and atomic clocks. Escapements, the mechanisms that drive pendulums, are a delight to the geometrical mind as well as a delicate and subtle challenge to the mechanical engineer. In their most refined form pendulum clocks not only keep astonishingly accurate time but are also sensitive enough to detect the ebb and flow of tides and even the ceaseless quivering of the Earth itself ER -