Sterling Silver Pocket Watches | Fusee Pocket Watch

Verge Fusee – A Pocket Watch History

15 November 2009

Comments (0)

Pocket watches began to appear in the 16th century and were actually know as pocket clocks at that time. These early versions of the pocket watch were pretty much useless as a timepiece and they could loose hours in one day, so they became more of a fashion statement for the more affluent of society.

It wasn’t until the mid 17th century that the pocket watch became a useful timepiece when the Fusee pulley was used to dramatically improve the timekeeping of pocket watches. The Fusee is attached to the mainspring barrel with a small chain and keeps an even reduction as the mainspring wound down. Although the Fusee mechanism had been used for years before in clocks it wasn’t until the mid 1600s that a Fusee could be made to fit in to a pocket watch and even then these kinds of watches although relatively accurate were bulky.

Verge Fusee Pocket Watches By the mid 1700s the Fusee was replaced by the Going Barrel by the French and adopted by the Swiss in the 1800s. The English however continued with the Fusee up until the 1900s

The picture on the right show the mechanism of a pocket watch and you can see the Fusee at the top left and the mainspring barrel at the bottom right.

There are many fine examples of early Verge Fusee Pocket Watches for sale on eBay and many are in perfect working order.