The watches of Daniel Quare

The watches of Daniel Quare.

Bracket Clock by Daniel Quare on display at the Walker Art Gallery, LiverpoolImage: Wikimedia User Racklever. On March 21, 1724, English clockmaker and instrument maker Daniel Quare passed away. He is best known for his invention of a repeating watch movement in 1680 and a portable barometer in 1695. Daniel Quare was probably born in 1648, but the sources differ. He was admitted a brother of the Clockmakers' Company in April 1671. When Quare started his career, the pendulum was a novelty just as much as the spiral spring and anchor escapement invented by Robert Hooke, and the fusee chain. Daniel Quare is believed to have invented the repeating watches and it is claimed that he adapted the concentric minute hand. However, if Daniel Quare was really the inventor of all these things, he must have come up with the ideas quite early in his career, as two concentric hands are shown in a diagram in Christopher Huyghens's 'Horologium Oscillatorium,' Paris, 1673. The clocks and watches made by Quare with only one hand are extant, or with two circles and pointers, one for the hours and another for the minutes. When in 1687 Edward Booth, alias Barlow, applied for a patent for 'pulling or repeating clocks and watches,' the Clockmakers' Company successfully opposed the application on the ground that the alleged invention was anticipated by a watch previously invented and made by Quare. The latter's watch was superior to Barlow's, because it repeated both the hour and the quarter with one pressure, while Barlow's required two. It is believed that Quare also made watched for James II. and William III., but the sources are apparently not very reliable on these facts. However, he most certainly made a clock for the king which went for a year without rewinding. Being specially made for a bedroom, it did not strike. In 1695, a patent was granted to Quare for a portable barometer. The barometer, in the words of the patent, 'may be removed and carried to any place, though turned upside down, without spilling one drop of the quicksilver or letting any air into the tube, and yet nevertheless the air shall have the same liberty to operate upon it as on those common ones now in use with respect to the weight of the atmosphere'. However, none of these said barometers are known to exist. At yovisto, you may be interested in a video illustrating watch making.

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