Nocturnals, for telling the time using the stars, and quadrants preceded the invention of the first weight-driven clock in the late 13th century.
To Western Europe after the Middle Ages, the analogues to the spindle were first, the weight-driven clock, a triumph of mechanical technology, and later, the steam engine, a climax of the dynamic.
The true innovation of the weight-driven clock was the escapement, the system that mediated the transfer of the energy of the gravitational force acting on the weights to the clock's counting mechanism.
For example: the blast furnace, canal lock, chimney, coal fire, glass window, eyeglasses, marine chart, waterwheel, printing press, suction pump, treadle loom, water-driven bellow, weight-driven clock, and windmill.
Over the following centuries, European inventers came on fire - amongst many other breakthroughs were the blast furnace, canal lock, chimney, coal fire, glass window, eyeglasses, marine chart, water wheel, printing press, suction pump, loom, water-driven bellows, weight-driven clock, and windmill.
The Ottoman engineer Taqi al-Din described a weight-driven clock with a verge-and-foliot escapement, a striking train of gears, an alarm, and a representation of the moon's phases in his book The Brightest Stars for the Construction of Mechanical Clocks (Al-Kawākib al-durriyya fī wadh' al-bankāmat al-dawriyya), written around 1556.
The actions of the escapement stabilize the power of the gravitational force and are what produce the ticktock of weight-driven clocks.
The timekeeping part of all weight-driven clocks, including large tower clocks, is substantially the same.
The earliest weight-driven mechanical clock in England was installed by Edward III in the Round Tower in 1354.
Act of Parliament clock, also called tavern clock, weight-driven wall clock with a large wooden, painted or lacquered dial.
The weight-driven wooden clocks were movements only, made under contract to Edward and Levi G. Porter who would then supply them for grandfather clocks.
