Did Galileo or Huygens invent the pendulum clock, according to In Our Time?

Kristen Lippincott said Galileo's biographer, a student writing much later, claimed Galileo noticed a swinging lamp in Pisa Cathedral in 1583. His first notes appear in 1588, and around 1602 he grasped that a pendulum's length, not the width of its swing, sets its period. As far as anyone knows he never built a working pendulum clock. That was left to Christiaan Huygens, the Dutch astronomer, whose design Jim Bennett said looks nothing like Galileo's drawing.

• Jim Bennett said scientists, not households, drove the demand for accuracy at this stage.
• Early Royal Society fellows hoped a seconds pendulum could define a universal standard of length.
• Jonathan Betts said the pendulum cut error from about 20 minutes a day to a few seconds.

Source: our own transcription of the episode. The full conversation is on In Our Time (2026-10-12). Read the whole episode summary →

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