Salomon Coster
Encyclopedia
Salomon Coster is a Dutch clockmaker of the Hague
The Hague
The Hague is the capital city of the province of South Holland in the Netherlands. With a population of 500,000 inhabitants , it is the third largest city of the Netherlands, after Amsterdam and Rotterdam...

, who in 1657 was the first clockmaker to make a pendulum clock
Pendulum clock
A pendulum clock is a clock that uses a pendulum, a swinging weight, as its timekeeping element. The advantage of a pendulum for timekeeping is that it is a resonant device; it swings back and forth in a precise time interval dependent on its length, and resists swinging at other rates...

, which had been invented by Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695). Costers' earliest pendulum clocks were signed "Samuel Coster Haghe met privilege" indicating that he had been authorized by the inventor to make such clocks. John Fromanteel, the son of a London clockmaker, Ahasuerus
Ahasuerus
Ahasuerus is a name used several times in the Hebrew Bible, as well as related legends and Apocrypha. This name is applied in the Hebrew Scriptures to three rulers...

, went to work for Coster. He was one of many foreign Clockmakers to soon make pendulum clocks following the prototype by Huygens and Coster. A contract was signed on the 3 September 1657 between Salomon Coster and John Fromanteel which allowed Frontmanteel to continue making the clocks. This clock design was heralded as a new beginning in the Clockmaking industry due to its level of timekeeping accuracy which was previously unheard of.

The oldest extant pendulum clock is signed by Salomon Coster and dated 1657. It is on display at the Boerhaave Museum
Boerhaave Museum
Museum Boerhaave is a museum of the history of science and medicine, based in Leiden, the Netherlands. The museum hosts a collection of historical scientific instruments from all disciplines, but mainly from medicine, physics, and astronomy.-Introduction:...

 in Leiden, the Netherlands
Netherlands
The Netherlands is a constituent country of the Kingdom of the Netherlands, located mainly in North-West Europe and with several islands in the Caribbean. Mainland Netherlands borders the North Sea to the north and west, Belgium to the south, and Germany to the east, and shares maritime borders...

. Coster died a sudden death in 1659.

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK