The Historical Origin of the World's First Mechanical Tower Clock
The German Peter Henry invented a spring-driven clock in 1500. One day in 1528, 18-year-old Galileo went to the church of Pisa to worship. He accidentally found a bronze lamp hanging on the statue of a deity swinging. And it was found that although the swing amplitude of the chandelier gradually became smaller, the time it took to swing once did not decrease. Therefore, he measured the number of beats of his pulse, and measured the isochronous law of the swing of a single pendulum that the period of the chandelier's swing has nothing to do with the amplitude of the swing.
A few years later, when Huygens read Galileo’s paper, he couldn’t help but think: “Since the swing of an object is isochronous, then if the force of the swing of the object can be used to drive the gears in the clock to rotate, it will not be possible to get more Is the time accurate?"
On this basis, a further determination was made. And the relationship between the period of the vibration of a simple pendulum and the square root of the pendulum length was determined. Huygens was very excited and immediately started experimenting with the timer. Failed, failed again... He worked tirelessly and worked hard to pay off. After a series of experiments, Huygens finally designed a pendulum mechanism to replace the balance wheel in the tower clock. In 1656, he commissioned a clockmaker to succeed. To create a clock that uses the vibration of the pendulum to keep time.
