christianhuygens,thependulumandthecycloid.docVIP

things are seldom what they seem -christiaAn Huygens, the pendulum and the cycloid by Alan Emmerson In December 1656, Dutch mathematician and scientist Christiaan Huygens invented what is regarded as the first pendulum regulated clock and he had Salomon Hendrikszoon Coster build an example early in 1657, or so we are told. Huygens was 28 years old. At about the same time, we are also told, Huygens became aware that if the amplitude of the pendulum’s swing changed, the time of swing would also change - the pendulum was not isochronous. The clocks built by Coster and several drawings attributed to Huygens, clearly show that they attempted to incorporate features in their clocks to alter the path of the pendulum bob to overcome this problem. Specifically, there were clocks which had curved metal plates, now known as “chops”, on either side of the pendulum suspension. These were placed so that the suspension thread could wrap around them over an arc of about 50( either side of the rest position. The path followed by the pendulum bob was therefore by definition an involute of the shape of the chops. It is said that Huygens deduced that, if the chops were cycloidal, the bob of a pendulum would swing along a cycloidal path, rather than the circular arc of the simple pendulum, and the pendulum would then be isochronous. Figure 1 Huygens’ Chops Figure 2. Cycloid and Involute Since being unexpectedly credited with “discovering” something which I thought was self evident, that Huygens’ isochronous cycloidal principle would not work with a pendulum having rigid components, I have become intrigued by the story of Huygens and the cycloid. Unfortunately, the popular twentieth century secondary sources in clocks and the history of science I have read are unconvincingly perfunctory, vague or ambiguous and do not seem to withstand scrutiny. It is common to find, for example, casual assertions that the chops on a particular clock were fitted to mak