"The Galileo clock has been designed from a picture that Galileo’s son drew after his father had gone blind, during the early 17th century. I developed the motion train for this and increased the pendulum length to make it into a proper working clock. As I created this myself I can assure you that so far there are only three of these exceptional devices on the planet"
Galileo hoped to solve the problem of determining longitudes at sea. At that time navigators knew how to measure latitudes from the altitude of the pole star, but they could not determine longitudes accurately. One of their main difficulties was that of transporting time, knowing while at sea what time it was at their point of departure so that they could compare this time with their local time. In short, they needed accurate clocks.
Galileo devised a way of measuring short intervals of time with pendulums which gave more accurate results than existing mechanical clocks. His pendulums were manually operated and would stop unless someone gave them “a lively push” when needed. In trying to improve this primitive method of keeping pendulums going, he invented an escapement (the mechanism through which the energy of a weight is delivered to the pendulum) and came very close to building the first pendulum clock. But blindness intervened, then death. All he could do was to describe the instrument he had in mind to his son, so accurately that Vincinzio could make a blueprint from which two centuries later a working pendulum clock was built.
Vincinzio's original blueprint can be seen below.
Galileo devised a way of measuring short intervals of time with pendulums which gave more accurate results than existing mechanical clocks. His pendulums were manually operated and would stop unless someone gave them “a lively push” when needed. In trying to improve this primitive method of keeping pendulums going, he invented an escapement (the mechanism through which the energy of a weight is delivered to the pendulum) and came very close to building the first pendulum clock. But blindness intervened, then death. All he could do was to describe the instrument he had in mind to his son, so accurately that Vincinzio could make a blueprint from which two centuries later a working pendulum clock was built.
Vincinzio's original blueprint can be seen below.