FOUCAULT, (JEAN BERNARD LEON) - THE FOUCAULT PENDULUM FIRST GERMAN EDITION.

Physikalischer Beweis von der Axendrehung der Erde mittelst des Pendels. (Compt. rend. T. XXXII p. 135).

Leipzig, Johann Ambrosius Barth, 1851 Without wrappers as issued in "Annalen der Physik und Chemie. Hrsg. von J.C. Poggendorff", 82. Bd., 3. issue ("Heft" No 3, 1851). Entire issue offered. Pp. 337-464. Foucault's paper: pp. 458-462. With titlepage to volume 82.

First German edition of the famous paper in which Foucault presented his discovery of the proof of the rotation of the earth by the large pendulum, called FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM. It was presented by Arago at the meeting of the Acadey of Scieces on February 3, 1851.

Since Léon Foucault’s public demonstration of his pendulum experiment, it has played a prominent role in physics, physics education, and the history of science. The Foucault pendulum is a long pendulum suspended high above the ground and carefully set into planar motion. The phenomenon described by Foucault1 concerns the orientation of the plane of oscillation of the pendulum.

"The experiment (with the pendulum) caused great exitement at the time. Heracleides had first suggested twenty-two centuries before that the earth was rotating and Copernicus had renewed the suggestion three centuries before. Since the time of Galileo two and a half centuries before, the world of scholarship had not doubted the matter. Nevertheless, all evidence as to that rotation had been indirect, and not until Foucault's experiment could the earth's rotation actually be said to have been demonstrated rather that deduced." (DSB).

Parkinson "Breakthroughs" 1851 E.

Order-nr.: 45070