Galileo's Pendulum

Bored during Mass at the cathedral in Pisa, the seventeen-year-old Galileo regarded the chandelier swinging overhead - and remarked, to his great surprise, that the lamp took as many beats to complete an arc when hardly moving as when it was swinging widely. Galileos Pendulum tells the story of what this observation meant, and of its profound consequences for science and technology.The principle behind the pendulums swing - a property called isochronism - marks a simple yet fundamental system in nature, one that ties the rhythm of time to the very existence of matter in the universe. Roger Newton begins with a look at biorhythms in living organisms and at early calendars and clocks-contrivances of nature and culture that, however adequate in their time, did not meet the precise requirements of seventeenth-century science and navigation.