"In a... controversy with Hevelius, Hooke prejudiced a good cause by bad manners. Hevelius having ignored his recommendation of telescopic sights, he [Hooke] devoted several Cutlerian lectures to unfriendly comments on that 'curious and pompous book,' the 'Machina Cœlestis.' Hooke's acrid, though just, arguments were collected as 'Animadversions on the First Part of the "Machina Cœlestis"' (1674), in which he inserted descriptions of a 'water-level' and of a mode of giving clockwork motion to a parallactic instrument. There is no doubt of Hooke's priority in the application of a spiral spring to regulate the balance of watches; but here again his peevish temper brought him discredit. The invention, arrived at about 1668, was designed to solve the problem of longitudes, and Boyle and Brouncker endeavoured to secure him a patent, but he declined their terms, and concealed the improvement until Huygens rediscovered it in 1675. He then caused some of his 'new watches' to be constructed by Tompion (one of which was presented to Charles II), and published the principle involved in them of the isochronism of springs in the maxim 'ut tensio, sic vis,' appended in cryptographic form to 'A Description of Helioscopes' (1676). A quarrel with Oldenburg on the subject culminated in Hooke's accusation of him as 'a trafficker in intelligence,' an expression which the Royal Society obliged him to withdraw. It was contained in a postscript to his 'Lampas, or a Description of some Mechanical Improvements of Lamps and Water-poises' (1677)."