Huygens Builds Pendulum Clock

1656

Christiaan Huygens, applying Galileo's observation of isochronism, patented a weight-driven clock regulated by a pendulum. It was accurate to within fifteen seconds a day, twenty times better than anything before. Timekeeping at last became scientific, and the first step toward navigational longitude had been taken. The pendulum clock would remain the world's most precise timekeeper for nearly three centuries.