The Physics of Why the First Clock in America Failed

The very first drawing of a concept for a pendulum clock was by Galileo Galilei, which sought to leverage the uniform period of a swinging pendulum to create a working timekeeping machine. The device was never completed, either by Galileo or his son, and the first pendulum clock would not be constructed until 1656 by Christiaan Huygens.)

starting in the early 1600s, scientific investigations into the swinging pendulum — and, in particular, Galileo’s observation that the period of a pendulum was determined solely by its length — led to the idea that a pendulum could theoretically be used as a clock.)

In 1656, working in the Netherlands, Christiaan Huygens invented the very first working pendulum clock)

standardizing a length of 0.994 meters for the pendulum, which meant that each “swing” from one side to the other lasted exactly one second (a “seconds pendulum”),)

A pendulum, so long as the weight is all in the bob at the bottom while air resistance, temperature changes, and large angle effects can be neglected, will always have the same period when subject to the same gravitational acceleration. The fact that the same pendulum swung at different rates between different locations in Europe and the Americas was a hint towards Newton’s gravitation.)