The Regulation of Clocks

1902

The remarkable pendulum experiment in the Pantheon at Paris to prove the rotation of the earth, strikingly illustrates the majestic uses of the familiar clock-maker's device.

It seems almost impossible of belief, in an age of well-regulated watches, that the clocks of Galileo's time could not be kept going at a uniform speed. Clocks went by means of a dragging weight, but the pendulum had not been thought of as a regulator. It occurred to Galileo to make a clock with the pendulum only, but of course, the work of turning the wheels stopped it. It was left to Haygens, in 1656, 14 years after the great astronomer's death, to combine the pendulum with the dragging weight and thus solve the problem of reckoning astronomical time with exactitude.