10 Facts About Pendulum clock

Pendulum clock is a clock that uses a pendulum, a swinging weight, as its timekeeping element.

From its invention in 1656 by Christiaan Huygens, inspired by Galileo Galilei, until the 1930s, the pendulum clock was the world's most precise timekeeper, accounting for its widespread use.

The home pendulum clock was replaced by less-expensive, synchronous, electric clocks in the 1930s and '40s.

The home pendulum clock began to be replaced as domestic timekeeper during the 1930s and 1940s by the synchronous electric clock, which kept more accurate time because it was synchronized to the oscillation of the electric power grid.

The most accurate experimental pendulum clock ever made may be the Littlemore Clock built by Edward T Hall in the 1990s.

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Pendulum clock is driven by an arm hanging behind it attached to the anchor piece of the escapement, called the "crutch", ending in a "fork" which embraces the pendulum rod.

Fine adjustment of the rate of the Pendulum clock could be made by slight changes to the internal pressure in the sealed housing.

Torsion pendulum clock requiring only annual winding is sometimes called a "400-Day clock" or "anniversary clock", sometimes given as a wedding gift.

The most accurate pendulum clock was the Shortt-Synchronome clock, a complicated electromechanical clock with two pendulums developed in 1923 by W H Shortt and Frank Hope-Jones, which was accurate to better than one second per year.

Experts can often pinpoint when an antique Pendulum clock was made within a few decades by subtle differences in their cases and faces.