The spring, at every degree of motion, gives degrees of force or weakness.

10, 10, 1

10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10

f, S, n, l, 10 10

Here it is disputed, in the springs figured, which is the easier way to load a spring — that is, to tighten it upon its pole, or to turn that pole to which the spring is joined and fix the opposite part of the spring, or to fix that pole and wind the spring onto it, taking it in the hand by the opposite end. And it is concluded that both ways are of equal power, since such a spring is a united body assailed from its ends by a power that always carries through all the parts of that body. And if you said that it has more violence from the middle inward than from the middle outward, because the coils are tighter there, here it is answered that this is true, but that such effort rests upon its opposite end. See the barrel of the spring n: if you turn it with the weight 10 attached at l, that weight has nothing to resist it save the pole f, which cannot resist except through the weight 10 that is attached to it at S, with which it opposes the descent of that l. And the spring that lies between these two bends so far that it resists twenty — that is, 10 at each of its ends — and there it stops. The power of such a spring diminishes after the manner of a pyramid, and for this reason the masters of clocks counter it with a pyramid, as is figured here below.

If the spring is of equal thickness, certainly, in discharging itself, its power always goes on diminishing. Whence we shall say that such power is of the nature of a pyramid, because it begins great and diminishes to nothing. Whence it is necessary to counter such pyramidal power, or to oppose it, with a pyramidal power, with a contrary diminution of resistance.