1 Edward John Dent's Glass Springs, Archive and Technical Analysis
1 Edward John Dent’s glass springs, archive and technical analysis combined. Jenny Bulstrode and Andrew Meek* *Bulstrode carried out the documentary research and acted as principal author. Meek carried out the technical analysis and authored the ‘Technical analysis’ section of the paper. Introduction Clockmakers have long pioneered the design and experimentation of new materials, often in response to demands from the state as well as the market. Late eighteenth and early nineteenth century research into the errors to which marine chronometers were liable is a superb example of this. Balance springs made of hard-drawn gold, resistant to oxidation, were used by John Arnold from the late 1770s, and subsequently by his son John Roger, until Arnold senior’s death. In 1828, Johann Gottlieb Ulrich patented a non-ferrous balance, while, in Glasgow that same year, James Scrymgeour produced a flat spiral made entirely of glass.1 It is the remarkable application of glass to the construction of balance springs that is the concern of this paper. Specifically, the efforts of the firm of Arnold & Dent, and later Dent alone, to secure the performance of their marine chronometers against variations in homogeneity, magnetism, temperature and elasticity, by using new materials for their balance springs. In April 1833, virtuoso chronometer-maker Edward John Dent, then of the firm Arnold & Dent, chose the Admiralty monthly periodical for seafarers, The Nautical Magazine, to announce the first successful construction of a helical balance spring made entirely of glass. The editor of The Nautical Magazine, hydrographic officer Alexander Bridport Becher, marvelled at the innovation, confidently predicting that navigation hereafter would be carried out with glass-spring chronometers, to a greater degree of exactness than ever before.
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