Balance Magnetique
American Watchmaker and Jeweler (1892)
John Hautefeuille, 4to, Paris, 1702. Reasons of the English Clock and Watchmakers against the Bill to Confirm the pretended new Invention of using precious and common Stones about Watches, Clocks and other Engines. London, 1704. Regle Artificielle du Temps, Henry Sully. Paris, 1717. A second edition 1717, with additions by Julien LeRoy. Description abregee d'une Horloge d'une nouvelle construction, pour la juste mesure du Temps sur mer. Henry Sully, Paris, 1726. A contrivance to avoid the Irregularities in a Clock's Motion, occasioned by the action of Heat and Cold on the Pendulum Rod. Phil. Trans., London, 1726. Letter asserting his right to the Curious and Useful Invention of making Clocks to keep time with the Sun's Apparent Motion. Joseph Williamson, Phil. Trans., London, 1726. Observations on the Going of a Clock in Jamaica. Colin Campbell, Phil. Trans., London, 1734. Traite General des Horloges, Jacques Alexandre (R. P. Dom), Paris, 1734. Experiments on the Vibrations of Pendulums. Wm. Durham, D. D., F. R. S., Phil. Trans, London, 1736. Traite d'Horlogerie. M. Thiout, 2 vols., Paris, 1741. Of the True Inventor of the Contrivances in the Pendulum of a Clock to Prevent Irregularities of its motion from Heat or Cold. James Short, F. R. S., Phil. Trans London, 1751. Description of two methods by which the Irregularities in the motion of a clock, arising from the influences of heat or cold on the Pendulum, may be prevented. John Ellicott, London, 1753. Account of the Influence of two Pendulum Clocks on each other. John Ellicott, 4to, London. No date. 1754? Traite d'Horlogerie. J. E. Lepaute, Paris, 1755. L'Art des Conduire et de Regler les Pendules et les Montres. F. Berthoud, Paris, 1760. Concerning the going of Mr. Ellicott's clock at St. Helena. Jas. Short F. R. S., Phil. Trans, London, 1762. Observations on a clock of Mr. John Shelton, made at St Helena. Nevil Maskelyne, Phil. Trans., London, 1762. Mechanicus and Flaveus; or the Watch Spiritualized. Svo, London, 1763. Les Quatres Parties du Jour. Charles Francis de Saint-Lambert; Paris, 1764.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
The American Watchmaker and Jeweler's 1892 entry is really a reading list of eighteenth-century horological literature, much of it wrestling with the problem the titles keep naming: how heat and cold on a pendulum rod, or magnetism on a balance, spoil a clock's rate. Those problems were solved soon after by metallurgy — Charles-Edouard Guillaume's nickel-steel Invar (1890s) and later Elinvar gave clockmakers rods and balance springs that barely changed with temperature and resisted magnetisation, and he took the 1920 Nobel Prize in Physics for the work. Then the mechanical oscillator itself was displaced: caesium atomic clocks from the mid-1950s redefined the second in 1967, and Seiko's Astron of 1969 put a quartz crystal where the balance wheel had been. The rare books listed here are now collectors' and museum material rather than working references, though the Philosophical Transactions papers are all freely readable online.
Written for this edition, 2026.