| 释义 |
escapement|ɪˈskeɪpmənt|
See also scapement.
[f. escape v. + -ment; app. first in sense 2 after Fr. échappement.]
1. a. The action of escaping. rare.
1824Hood Two Swans iv, Hope can spy no golden gate For sweet escapement. 1864Sala in Daily Tel. 19 Oct., Wilmington, the last avenue of escapement left open to the beleaguered South.
b. A means of escape; an outlet.
1856Froude Hist. Eng. (1858) I. iv. 327 He allowed her to go her own way, as the best escapement of a frenzy. 1857Livingstone Trav. iii. 67 This little arm would prove a convenient escapement to prevent inundation. 1876Geo. Eliot Dan. Der. I. xi. 209 The archery ball..was not an escapement for youthful high spirits.
2. a. Watch and Clock-making. In a watch or clock, the mechanism which intervenes between the motive power and regulator, and which alternately checks and releases the train, thus causing an intermittent impulse to be given to the regulator.
Escapements are of various kinds, as the anchor-, chronometer-, crown-, dead-beat-, lever-, etc., escapement.[The Fr. échappement (in quot. 1801 anglicized as echapement) occurs, as a current term in a paper dated 1716 printed in Machines approuvées par l'Académie (1735) III. 93; the etymological reference is to the regulated ‘escape’ of the toothed wheel from its detention by the pallet. The earliest instances of the word in Eng. are in the form scapement, though at the period to which they belong the verb scape was already archaic in general sense.] [1739Phil. Trans. XLI. 126 The teeth of the swing wheel would scape free of the pallets. 1755Bosley's Patent No. 698, 4 Scapement. 1766Cumming Clockmaking Index, Scapement is the means by which the action of the wheels is applied to maintain vibration.] 1779Chambers Cycl. (ed. Rees), Escapement, see Scapement. 1801J. Jones tr. Bygge's Trav. Fr. Rep. xvi. 384 Breguet, the famous watch⁓maker, has discovered a new echapement. 1825J. Nicholson Operat. Mechanic 514 From the..description of the several parts of the escapement..it will be easy to see the mode of its action. 1880S. P. Thompson in Nature XXI. 398 Models of every form of escapement.
transf.1858O. W. Holmes Aut. Breakf.-t. (1865) 73 Death alone can..silence at last the clicking of the terrible escapement we have carried so long beneath our wrinkled foreheads.
b. attrib., as in escapement-wheel.
1830Kater & Lardner Mech. xiv. 194 From the action of the pallets in checking the motion of the wheel and allowing its teeth alternately to escape, this has been called the escapement wheel.
3. In a pianoforte (see quot. 1896).
1896A. J. Hipkins Pianoforte 114 Escapement, a space that is left between the hammer at its full rise and the strings, necessary for the strings to vibrate and to prevent jarring. 1961C. Clutton in A. Baines Mus. Instruments 89 The essentials of the modern pianoforte action:..double action, a check, an escapement, and an una corda mechanism.
Add:4. The mechanism in a typewriter which controls the regular, leftward movement of the carriage between key-strokes. Cf. spacer n. 1 a.
[1866J. Pratt Brit. Pat. 3163: Provisional Specification (1867) 5 The same movement of the rod..which causes the hammer stroke causes also an oscillation of the pallets and a movement of the escapement wheel and line frame.] 1881Reasons for Preferring Caligraph as Writing Machine (Amer. Writing Machine Co.) 3 The lightness of the carriage reduces the friction at the escapement, and the force needed to depress the keys: another reason for the great speed of the machine. 1909G. C. Mares Hist. Typewriter iii. 61 A new escapement, which gives unprecedented speed powers, soft, light, and pleasant touch. 1957Encycl. Brit. XXII. 645/1 Among its original features which were still standard in machines built in the 1950s are the paper cylinder.., the escapement which causes the letter spacing, [etc.]. 1986Byte Feb. 206/3 Large office-standard machine with differential character widths and escapements. |