Escapement wheels, which because they lacked a balance spring had no natural "beat", so there was not much incentive to improve the escapement. The great leap in accuracy resulting from the invention of the pendulum and balance spring around 1657, which made the timekeeping elements in both watches and clocks harmonic oscillators, focused attention on the errors of the escapement, and more accurate escapements soon superseded the verge. The next two centuries, the "golden age" of mechanical horology, saw the invention of perhaps 300 escapement designs, although only about 10 stood the test of time and were widely used in clocks
Mechanical energy isolated system remains constant in time, as long as the system is free of friction and other non-conservative forces. In any real situation, frictional forces and other non-conservative forces are present, but in many cases their effects on the system are so small that the principle of conservation of mechanical energy can be used as a fair approximation. Though energy cannot be created or destroyed in an isolated system, it can be converted to another form of energy. In a mechanical system like a swinging pendulum subjected to the conservative gravitational force where frictional forces like air drag and friction