Talk:Verge escapement
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[edit] What about the foliot?
This article fails to mention that for 300 years before the invention of the pendulum, the verge escapement was used exclusively with the ‘foliot’ timekeeper in the 'verge and foliot' regulating mechanism. ‘Verge and foliot’ is the common distinguishing term for clocks of that construction. The article doesn’t mention the foliot at all, even though the Wikipedia heading ‘foliot’ and 'verge and foliot' redirect here. The historical importance of the verge is inextricably linked to the foliot, because the first mechanical clocks in the world were verge and foliot types. The early clocks mentioned, the Villard de Honnecourt and Salisbury Cathedral clocks, used verge and foliot. In contrast, the use of verge escapements with pendulums was quickly superseded (within about 50 years) by the anchor escapement, as the article says.
A casual reading of the article might give the impression that the only important use of the verge escapement was with pendulum clocks. Admittedly, in the technical clock collecting and repair fields, the word verge is considered part of a pendulum clock, because there are many more verge pendulum clocks in existence. But historically, the verge is much more associated with the foliot. Encyclopedia Brittanica weight driven clock article refers to ‘verge' almost exclusively with 'foliot'. I did a Google search on ‘verge’ and ‘clock’. Out of the first 28 results, 17 used ‘verge’ only in connection with ‘foliot’.
I understand the intention was to limit the scope of the article to the escapement mechanism (verge) regardless of the timekeeping mechanism (foliot or pendulum) used with it. But not mentioning the foliot at all risks misunderstanding this important technological breakthrough. --Chetvorno 01:55, 2 June 2007 (UTC)
- Rewrote article 8 June 2007 to add section on verge and foliot clocks --Chetvorno 01:05, 18 August 2007 (UTC)
[edit] Change reference citation style?
If nobody minds, I'd like to change the reference style from the Harvard format to the more common footnote format. I tried the Harvard here as an experiment. But the Harvard template requires every citation's source to be listed under 'References', and the number is getting large. With the footnote style, only the major refs need to be there. --Chetvorno 12:08, 25 October 2007 (UTC)
