Balance spring (hairspring)
Muelle espiral de volante
- Date
- 1675 · confidence high
- Place
- Paris, France (Huygens) / London (Hooke)
- Credited to
- Christiaan Huygens; claimed by Robert Hooke
- People
- 👤 Christiaan Huygens1629–1695
- Field
- Knowledge & symbols
⚠️ Disputed: the sources disagree.
What it is
A spiral spring coupled to the balance wheel, giving it its own period of oscillation, which made the portable watch accurate (an error of minutes rather than hours). The basis of every mechanical pocket and wrist watch.
Hooke claimed to have invented it in 1660 and showed a watch in 1675; Huygens published it in the Journal des sçavans in 1675. The Royal Society never resolved the dispute.
What it led to
- Pocket watches useful for navigation and science
- The precision watchmaking industry in London, Paris and Geneva
- An emblematic priority dispute of the new scientific societies
Built on
- Pocket watchc. 1510
- Pendulum clock1656
- Hooke's law1660 (publicada 1678)
- Hooke's law of elasticity
Made possible
- Marine chronometer1735 (H1) / 1759 (H4)
- Pocket watch with minute hand
- Cylinder and anchor escapements for clocks