Anchor escapement teeth, which made the escape wheel rotate once per minute so the second hand could be attached to its shaft. In a 30 tooth escape wheel the pallets span about 7½ teeth. The impulse angle of the pallets, which determined the swing of the pendulum, was 3°-4°. The anchor was the second widely used escapement in Europe, replacing the 400-year-old verge escapement in pendulum clocks. The pendulums in verge escapement clocks had very wide swings of 80° to 100°. In 1673, seventeen years after he invented the pendulum clock, Christiaan Huygens published his mathematical analysis of pendulums, "Horologium Oscillatorium". In
Escapement was unworkable. Arnold also designed a spring detent escapement but, with improved design, Earnshaw's version eventually prevailed as the basic idea underwent several minor modifications during the last decade of the 18th century. The final form appeared around 1800, and this design was used until mechanical chronometers became obsolete in the 1970s. The detent is a detached escapement; it allows the balance wheel to swing undisturbed during most of its cycle, except the brief impulse period, which is only given once per cycle (every other swing). Because the driving escape wheel tooth moves almost parallel to the pallet, the escapement