Pendulum clock

A pendulum clock is a clock that uses a pendulum, a swinging weight, as its timekeeping element. It was invented in 1656 by Christiaan Huygens. From the year 1656 until the 1930s, the pendulum clock was the world's most accurate way of keeping time. This is what caused it to be used by a lot of people all over the place. It works on principle of periodic motion.

History

The pendulum clock was invented by Christiaan Huygens in 1656 but was inspired by Galileo Galilei's work on pendulums where he discovered that a pendulum takes the same amount of time to swing no matter how wide the swing is and it is only changed by how long the pendulum is. This discovery made the use of pendulums as timekeeping devices possible.

Before the first pendulum clocks, clocks drifted from the actual time by less than 15 minutes per day. After pendulums, which were the first harmonic oscillator used in clocks, began being used, clocks started drifting by only 15 seconds from the actual time per day. Pendulum clocks being much more accurate than the verge and foilet clocks used at the time caused many people to start using them and even change existing clocks to use pendulums.

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1. ↑ "The Galileo Project | Science | Pendulum Clock". galileo.library.rice.edu. Retrieved 2026-09-08.