Early Renaissance Concepts of Time and the Invention of Mechanical Clocks

Mechanical clocks appeared in Europe at the end of the thirteenth century and became widespread during the fourteenth century. Clocks utilized a periodic process – the oscillation of a verge – for accurate time measurement, which is consistent with the Aristotelian concept of time defined by motion. The concept was at the center of debates among scholastics and theologians, which culminated in the Church's Condemnation of Aristotelian teaching in 1277. The debate also led to the discovery of Impetus (inertial motion) by Buridan and Oresme. Sand clocks became a popular device at about the same time. The pendulum clocks invented by Huygens in the 1650s utilized linear oscillations, which, unlike the earlier verge mechanism, had their natural frequency. Both mechanisms are analyzed to explain why the introduction of the linear oscillator led to a 30-times accuracy improvement of the clock.