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Foucault, Jean Bernard Léon

(Encyclopedia) Foucault, Jean Bernard LéonFoucault, Jean Bernard LéonzhäN bĕrnärˈ lāôNˈ f&oomacr;kōˈ [key], 1819–68, French physicist. Known especially for his research on the speed of light, he…

pendulum

(Encyclopedia) pendulum, a mass, called a bob, suspended from a fixed point so that it can swing in an arc determined by its momentum and the force of gravity. The length of a pendulum is the…

Eco, Umberto

(Encyclopedia) Eco, UmbertoEco, Umbertoəmbĕrˈtō ĕcō [key], 1932–2016, Italian novelist, essayist, and semiotics scholar. His first novel, the best-selling Il nome della rosa (1980; tr. The Name of…

Foucault, Michel

(Encyclopedia) Foucault, Michel, 1926–84, French philosopher and historian. He was professor at the Collège de France (1970–84). He is renowned for historical studies that reveal the sometimes…

Pendulum Clocks

In 1656, Christiaan Huygens, a Dutch scientist, made the first pendulum clock, regulated by a mechanism with a “natural” period of oscillation. Although Galileo Galilei, sometimes credited…

Michel Foucault

Name at birth: Paul-Michel FoucaultFrench philosopher Michel Foucault came to prominence in the 1960s as a provocative voice whose academic studies of power and institutions included Madness and…

Umberto Eco

Before he was a best-selling novelist, Umberto Eco's reputation rested on his academic writings on language and semiotics (the study of symbols). An Italian critic, philosopher and historian…

metronome

(Encyclopedia) metronomemetronomemĕˈtrənōmˌ [key], in music, originally pyramid-shaped clockwork mechanism to indicate the exact tempo in which a work is to be performed. It has a double pendulum…

clock

(Encyclopedia) CE5 A pendulum clock: Weight-driven clock mechanism clock, instrument for measuring and indicating time. Predecessors of the clock were the sundial, the hourglass, and the…