[Fragments of History 5] The Story of the 'Father of Mechanical Clocks' - The Man Who Made Time Portable

Every weekend, my roommate Mikishan starts picking up fragments of history.
It looks like she picked up something today, too.
Tick-tock, tick-tock... what is that?
Looks interesting!
From Hiiragi the cat

In 1656, the Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens completed the pendulum clock.
The principle of the pendulum was discovered by the famous Galileo Galilei, and it seems his son tried to use it to build a pendulum clock but couldn't.

It was Huygens who succeeded in doing so.

Realizing that to keep the pendulum's period constant, the pendulum had to trace a path called a cycloid, he succeeded in building a large clock that could accurately trace a cycloid curve using a pendulum and weights.
He surprised everyone by creating a clock with an error of less than one minute per day.
Three years later, he even built an exquisite clock with an error of within a few seconds per day.

And what's more.
To solve the problem that pendulum clocks were accurate but too large, Huygens developed a spring-driven clock.
Pocket watches were created using his balance spring mechanism. In other words, people became able to carry 'accurate time' with them.

For this reason, he is called the 'Father of Mechanical Clocks'.
It is not hard to imagine that his inventions greatly changed human life.
As scientists of the so-called 'Scientific Revolution' period of the 16th and 17th centuries, Galileo and Kepler are more famous, but Huygens' achievements must have been tremendously significant as well.

By the way, it was also Huygens who discovered Saturn's rings and Titan.

A word from Hiiragi
'Pendulums are fun, aren't they? I could watch them forever.'

Read Hiiragi's articles too

Please take a look at other fragments of history if you'd like