The transformations of horology during the Renaissance and the Classical era stem directly from the changes that marked the end of the Middle Ages in the conception of time. By establishing themselves on public monuments, tower clocks and belfry clocks tended to democratize the measurement of hours, to render it universal. All that remained was the miniaturization and improvement of existing mechanisms for the clock to enter its fully modern meaning; and it is, in part, the work on the marine pendulum that made this possible. Discover the history of horology between 1500 and 1800.
The concept of miniaturizing timepieces—thus enabling portability—emerged toward the end of the Gothic period; this would lead to the modern understanding of the watch, and it is a preoccupation that runs through the entire history of horology during the Renaissance and the Classical era.
The diffusion of the clock—its entry into households as standard equipment—required its necessary miniaturization. The small format was an indispensable objective for timepieces to leave town halls and churches and integrate into the interiors of workshops and homes; consequently, an entirely new technology had to be invented, the entire mechanism reconceived. Reduced dimensions necessitated the use of a screw; the screw, in turn, enabled the development of other mechanisms; the market opened by miniaturization created a demand that, itself, drove the creation of new models accessible to the greatest number; and so forth.
In any case, it is the invention of the mainspring in the fifteenth century, replacing the balance wheel characteristic of clocks, that progressively enabled the reduction of timepiece dimensions. By tensioning and releasing, the spring provides the energy necessary for the mechanism to function, without requiring a large object such as the balance wheel.
Peter Heinlein is generally credited with the creation of the pocket watch, the starting point of Renaissance horology; it was worn as a pendant or around the neck, at the end of a chain. By flattening, it subsequently gave rise to the pocket watch. We are then in Augsburg, Germany, at the dawn of the sixteenth century; together with Nuremberg, the two cities constituted the first watchmaking centers of Europe. The center of gravity of horology shifted rapidly toward Geneva and London: by the end of the sixteenth century, the former already counted 25 master watchmakers; a century later, there were nearly a hundred. As for England, the watchmakers’ guild was officially established there in 1631: it responded to the concern of local artisans who saw precision work on timepieces monopolized by technicians from across the Channel. The development of the pocket watch was thus accompanied by the rise of horology as an industry.
Finally, the wristwatch—the culmination of this slow progression leading from clock to watch (both miniaturized and portable)—appeared toward the end of the eighteenth century, when Pierre Jaquet-Droz designed and produced his first models in Geneva. The history of horology sometimes mentions the existence of wristwatches well before this date (Queen Elizabeth I is said to have received, at the end of the sixteenth century, a bracelet decorated with a small timepiece), but it remains difficult to judge the authenticity of these references.
The history of the development of horology is intimately linked to that of the evolutions of the marine chronometer: it is the human need to determine a precise position on the oceans that drove the inventors of the Classical era to design instruments intended for use on water, in order to calculate longitude at any moment—a far more complex matter than the determination of latitude, for which it sufficed to know the height of the Sun above the horizon.
Inspired by the work of Galileo, who could never complete his projects for designing a marine timekeeper usable on the deck of a ship, Dutch and English inventors developed increasingly sophisticated marine chronometers. Galileo had “discovered” the isochronism of the pendulum in 1583, during a visit to the baptistery of the Cathedral of Pisa, when he was only 19 years old; in the mid-seventeenth century, Christiaan Huygens adopted the use of the balance wheel and adapted it to create a marine pendulum.
When Huygens produced the first balance-spring watch in 1674, the English inventor Robert Hooke cried foul: he claimed to have originated this discovery in 1658. Be that as it may, the fact remains that the combination of the spring as driving force and the balance spring as regulator opened the way to the design of the classical marine chronometer. With this system established, all that remained was to provide motivation: this came in the form of the competition launched in 1714 by the British Parliament, with a reward for whoever could produce a marine chronometer capable of measuring longitude with sufficient precision.
The winner of this competition was John Harrison. Aided financially by the celebrated George Graham, he achieved in 1761 a marine chronometer model—number 4—that showed only 5 seconds of delay (representing only 1.5 minutes of longitude) over 6 months of crossing between London and Jamaica. But this was not the only revolution. For Harrison’s marine chronometer was the equivalent of a large watch, which meant it was transportable on land as well as at sea (the spring mechanism being unaffected by gravity) and easily readable by sailors. Far simpler to use than the complex mathematics required for navigation on water, the marine chronometer gradually became widespread throughout Europe, paving the way, through its increasingly precise mechanisms, to modern horology.
The Evolutions of Horology during the Renaissance and the Classical Era
The concept of miniaturizing timepieces—thus enabling portability—emerged toward the end of the Gothic period; this would lead to the modern understanding of the watch, and it is a preoccupation that runs through the entire history of horology during the Renaissance and the Classical era.
The diffusion of the clock—its entry into households as standard equipment—required its necessary miniaturization. The small format was an indispensable objective for timepieces to leave town halls and churches and integrate into the interiors of workshops and homes; consequently, an entirely new technology had to be invented, the entire mechanism reconceived. Reduced dimensions necessitated the use of a screw; the screw, in turn, enabled the development of other mechanisms; the market opened by miniaturization created a demand that, itself, drove the creation of new models accessible to the greatest number; and so forth.
In any case, it is the invention of the mainspring in the fifteenth century, replacing the balance wheel characteristic of clocks, that progressively enabled the reduction of timepiece dimensions. By tensioning and releasing, the spring provides the energy necessary for the mechanism to function, without requiring a large object such as the balance wheel.
From Clock to Watch
Peter Heinlein is generally credited with the creation of the pocket watch, the starting point of Renaissance horology; it was worn as a pendant or around the neck, at the end of a chain. By flattening, it subsequently gave rise to the pocket watch. We are then in Augsburg, Germany, at the dawn of the sixteenth century; together with Nuremberg, the two cities constituted the first watchmaking centers of Europe. The center of gravity of horology shifted rapidly toward Geneva and London: by the end of the sixteenth century, the former already counted 25 master watchmakers; a century later, there were nearly a hundred. As for England, the watchmakers’ guild was officially established there in 1631: it responded to the concern of local artisans who saw precision work on timepieces monopolized by technicians from across the Channel. The development of the pocket watch was thus accompanied by the rise of horology as an industry.
Finally, the wristwatch—the culmination of this slow progression leading from clock to watch (both miniaturized and portable)—appeared toward the end of the eighteenth century, when Pierre Jaquet-Droz designed and produced his first models in Geneva. The history of horology sometimes mentions the existence of wristwatches well before this date (Queen Elizabeth I is said to have received, at the end of the sixteenth century, a bracelet decorated with a small timepiece), but it remains difficult to judge the authenticity of these references.
Clock and Marine Chronometer: The Holy Grail of Seventeenth-Century Inventors
The history of the development of horology is intimately linked to that of the evolutions of the marine chronometer: it is the human need to determine a precise position on the oceans that drove the inventors of the Classical era to design instruments intended for use on water, in order to calculate longitude at any moment—a far more complex matter than the determination of latitude, for which it sufficed to know the height of the Sun above the horizon.
Inspired by the work of Galileo, who could never complete his projects for designing a marine timekeeper usable on the deck of a ship, Dutch and English inventors developed increasingly sophisticated marine chronometers. Galileo had “discovered” the isochronism of the pendulum in 1583, during a visit to the baptistery of the Cathedral of Pisa, when he was only 19 years old; in the mid-seventeenth century, Christiaan Huygens adopted the use of the balance wheel and adapted it to create a marine pendulum.
When Huygens produced the first balance-spring watch in 1674, the English inventor Robert Hooke cried foul: he claimed to have originated this discovery in 1658. Be that as it may, the fact remains that the combination of the spring as driving force and the balance spring as regulator opened the way to the design of the classical marine chronometer. With this system established, all that remained was to provide motivation: this came in the form of the competition launched in 1714 by the British Parliament, with a reward for whoever could produce a marine chronometer capable of measuring longitude with sufficient precision.
The winner of this competition was John Harrison. Aided financially by the celebrated George Graham, he achieved in 1761 a marine chronometer model—number 4—that showed only 5 seconds of delay (representing only 1.5 minutes of longitude) over 6 months of crossing between London and Jamaica. But this was not the only revolution. For Harrison’s marine chronometer was the equivalent of a large watch, which meant it was transportable on land as well as at sea (the spring mechanism being unaffected by gravity) and easily readable by sailors. Far simpler to use than the complex mathematics required for navigation on water, the marine chronometer gradually became widespread throughout Europe, paving the way, through its increasingly precise mechanisms, to modern horology.