Christiaan Huygens, Pendulum Clocks, and a Curve “Not at All Considered by the Ancients”

Abstract

We have told how Galileo laid the foundation for classical mechanics almost at the beginning of the seventeenth century. Christiaan Huygens (1629–1695) was Galileo’s immediate scientific successor. In Lagrange’s words, Huygens “was destined to improve and develop most of Galileo’s important discoveries.”¹ There is a story about how Huygens, at age seventeen, first came into contact with Galileo’s ideas: He planned to prove that a projectile launched moves horizontally along a parabola, but discovered a proof in Galileo’s book and did not want “to write the Iliad after Homer.” It is striking how close Huygens and Galileo were in scientific spirit and interests.