"It is like a watch without a mainspring.
In 2000 Europe's leaders committed the region to becoming "the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world" by 2010.Governments have good reason to foster innovation, for it is the mainspring of economic growth.
But at $40,000 it is hardly cheap.Another drawback of a traditional watch is that as the mainspring uncoils, the power that the escapement transfers to the balance-wheel declines, making the watch run slower.
But its mainspring may be about to break.
Here, as applied to law, was the very mainspring of the pragmatists' outlook: the meaning of a doctrine or theory is indistinguishable from the practical effects of adopting it.James and Peirce were, more strictly, the philosophers of the club, and the pair make a wonderful study in contrasts.
The combination of the two is holding back productivity improvement, the mainspring of rising living standards; firms cannot take full advantage of new information technology through just-in-time production, for instance, if deliveries are unpunctual.
He fails to mention that this system has been the mainspring for comprehensive market-rigging and pervasive corruption in Japan, particularly in public works.
The mainspring, the element that drives the watch, consists of a flat spring-steel band stressed in bending or coiling; when the watch, or other spring-driven mechanism, is wound, the curvature of the spring is increased, and energy is thus stored.
With this arrangement, the mainspring was made to rotate a barrel in which it was housed; a length of catgut, later replaced by a chain, was wound on it, the other end being coiled around the fusee.
When the mainspring was fully wound, the gut or chain pulled on the smallest radius of the cone-shaped fusee; as the mainspring ran down, the leverage was progressively increased as the gut or chain pulled on a larger radius.
Both men, while admiring the classical landscapes of Claude Lorrain and Poussin, believed that personal feeling was the mainspring of artistic activity and felt an almost mystical sympathy for the natural world.
