If we had been sitting there, we might have said the swings were like the ticking of a clock. (Perhaps it was a hot day and the doors had been opened to allow air to circulate.) As Galileo watched the motion of the chandelier, he noticed that the swinging motion was very regular. For some unknown reason, the chandelier was swinging back and forth just a bit. His mind was restless and he turned his gaze toward a chandelier above his head. The story goes that one day Galileo was sitting in the cathedral of Pisa (the town in Italy that has the famous Leaning Tower). But the first written record we have of this discovery is by Galileo, in the year not that long ago when you consider the entire history of the human race. You d think that over the millennia someone would have noticed how incredibly regular the motion of a pendulum is, and thought of using them for keeping time. During the Renaissance, heavy pendulums were used as sources of power for machines such as saws and pumps. Weapons such as slings and trebuchets used swinging objects. The Egyptians invented an irrigation device made of a bucket hanging from a beam. Some ancient cultures figured out how to rig up baby swings. Children have been swinging on ropes and vines since ancient times. 1 PENDULUM MOTION People have been using pendulums for thousands of years.
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