I see the term verge movement or verge watch, but cannot find a definition. Can you help? Thanks!

Isn't a verge escapement what most fusse movements are, I think the verge is the arbor with the two little flag shapes which acted as the pallet in a fusse watch.

Tom

There are a number of web pages that discuss the verge fusee movement. Do a Google or Yahoo search. A picture is worth a thousand words.

Mortimer and Tom, the link I've pasted below should take you to an animation of the verge escapement, which will give you an excellent idea of how the escapement operates.
You may need to install 'shockwave' or some other media for it to function though.

http://vergeworks.net/vergeworks.swf

The verge is pretty much what Tom's brief description suggests and is a specific escapement which was used in earlier clocks and watches.

The term 'Fusee' however, is very much abused and misinterpretted, and has tended to become a 'catch-all' term for any type of chain driven watch - this is Not strictly true, as the escapement types which employ the fusee drive arrangement are quite different.

The fusee is a tapered cone with a groove machined around it's circumference, and into which the chain is guided, and which also by design, ensures that the chain winds onto and off the plain walled mainspring barrel in a tidy manner.

The basic function of the fusee is to provide a more uniform power transmission from what were very inefficient mainsprings - fully wound they were strong and got weaker as they unwound. This variation in power to the train obviously caused a similar variation in timekeeping accuracy.

The taper function of the cone helps to even out that variation of spring power transmitted to the gear train by changing the lever (radius) of the driving wheel - the Fusee cone!

As the spring is unwound, the chain moves progreesively onto a larger radius of the cone and transmits increased torque to counteract the reducing power of the mainspring.

The fusee is also to be found on Verge, English Lever and Cylinder watch movements, so to describe a watch simply as a 'Fusee' is way off mark and has undoubtedly cost many eBay sellers a lot of money by virtue of a 'generic' movement description.

Verge watches are invariably fusee driven, English levers and the less common cylinder movements used both fusee and going barrels for motive power, and all of them (as far as I'm aware) used chains, whereas clocks used chains, gut and bronze wire between the mainspring barrel and fusee.

Finally, I would also add that putting a few choice words into Google and other search engines will bring up all manner of web pages, so yes, give it a go.
It always helps a bunch though if you have some background knowledge in the first place to identify what you want to find!

Best regards

John.

Thanks, everyone, for the help. I did a Yahoo search that led me to Wikipedia.org, and there is a nice description and explanation there. The article points out that the movement was not too accurate, but there were exceptions. I wonder too if mechanical reliability was a problem.