Anchor escapement
Escape de áncora
- Date
- c. 1670 · confidence medium
- Place
- London, England, United Kingdom
- Credited to
- William Clement (with Robert Hooke's claim)
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
An anchor-shaped escapement that engages the escape wheel and reduces the pendulum's amplitude to a few degrees, making the clock more accurate and allowing a long pendulum. With the seconds pendulum, it made regular long-case clocks possible.
Authorship is disputed: Robert Hooke claimed the invention around 1658 and the clockmaker William Clement applied it around 1670. Historians have not settled which came first.
What it led to
- long-case ('grandfather') precision clocks
- Graham's dead-beat escapement (1720)
- observatory precision clocks