Grasshopper escapement to Harrison were poor, messy and short-lived. This meant that conventional clocks had to be stopped frequently for cleaning and oiling. Using his clean and absolutely stable grasshopper escapement Harrison began a series of long-term investigations into the performance of clocks, leading to his invention of the gridiron pendulum which counteracted the effects of expansion and contraction with changing temperature. The performance of his improved clocks in turn gave him an accurate, convenient standard against which to test his marine timekeepers. Harrison developed the grasshopper escapement from a conventional anchor escapement which he built for a turret clock to go
Mechanical energy steam engine converts heat energy to mechanical energy. Energy is a scalar quantity and the mechanical energy of a system is the sum of the potential energy which is measured by the position of the parts of the system. The kinetic energy which is also called the energy of motion: The potential energy, "U", depends on the position of an object subjected to a conservative force. It is defined as the object's ability to do work and is increased as the object is moved in the opposite direction of the direction of the force. If "F" represents the conservative force