Pestoline

First clock using a short Foucault pendulum.

It is common to see large Foucault pendulums placed in high buildings, with the heaviest possible pendulum: up to 50 metres high and 300 kg. These instruments give us an oscillation that can last up to 10 seconds. But what about the small clocks? I have wanted to build a clock according to the Foucault pendulum principle for a long time. It would prove the rotation of the earth and at the same time indicate the time, the latitude and the hemisphere. But to do this, it had to be one metre long to give an oscillation of one second. The first prototypes started in 1999/2000 without success, with tests of axial, magnetic, gimbal or chuck suspensions: two years lost. The only thing they taught me was that a short eddy current pendulum is infinitely more difficult to make than a normal pendulum.
The base of this clock was designed without any aesthetic considerations, simply as a prototype to be modified and improved continuously. It started to spin to my great surprise one day in December 2002, and has never stopped since.

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