IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/spr/sprchp/978-3-642-50121-0_31.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

The Development of the Pendulum as a Device for Regulating Clocks Prior to the 18th Century

In: The Study of Time II

Author

Listed:
  • S. G. Atwood

Abstract

The pendulum, according to Webster’s Third International Dictionary, is: (a) “a body suspended from a fixed point so as to swing to and fro under the action of gravity and commonly used to regulate the movements of clockwork and other machinery;” or (b) “a suspended body that vibrates not by swinging but by rotating, with alternate twisting and untwisting (as the balance wheel of a watch) — called also torsion pendulum.” In the case of the swinging pendulum, the period is constant and more or less independent of the amplitude and of the swing, angular velocity of the swing, and of the mass of the bobbin. Because the pendulum swings with a regular motion of equal periods without regard to amplitude or mass, it is useful as a timekeeper.

Suggested Citation

  • S. G. Atwood, 1975. "The Development of the Pendulum as a Device for Regulating Clocks Prior to the 18th Century," Springer Books, in: J. T. Fraser & N. Lawrence (ed.), The Study of Time II, pages 417-450, Springer.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-642-50121-0_31
    DOI: 10.1007/978-3-642-50121-0_31
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:spr:sprchp:978-3-642-50121-0_31. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.springer.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.