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The Encyclopedia of Horology

Detached escapement

Pin-pallet (pin-lever) escapement

Verified

Steel pins set into the pallet arms engage the escape-wheel teeth directly in place of jewelled pallet stones, giving a simplified and cheaper version of the lever escapement's locking and impulse action.

Schematic arrangement

How it is laid out

Escape wheelSteel pins in place of jewelled pallets

Outline schematic only, drawn to show the characteristic arrangement of wheel, locking member and oscillator. It is not a dimensioned working drawing and should not be used for setting up or repairing a movement.

Advantages

  • Inexpensive to manufacture
  • Simple to assemble in volume
  • Reasonably robust

Drawbacks

  • More friction and wear than a jewelled lever
  • Lower long-term accuracy
  • Pins wear and require eventual replacement

Attribution and period

Developed in the nineteenth century and widely adopted for inexpensive watches and clocks from the early twentieth century

Horological firsts are frequently contested. Where an invention is attributed to a named maker, that attribution is recorded as such rather than treated as settled fact.

Photographs

1867 Montre Roskopf
1867 Montre Roskopf — Chardon bleu, CC BY-SA 3.0. Wikimedia Commons file page

Photographs are matched automatically from freely licensed Wikimedia Commons material. Each caption states the actual subject of the image and credits its author; where a close match for this escapement does not exist, a related mechanism may be shown instead.