Pendulum Clock

Why this clock exists

Christiaan Huygens made the first successful pendulum clock in December 1656; the Science Museum's early Coster clock followed under his license. A pendulum offered clockmakers a repeated motion regular enough to trust. Here, the swinging weight and escape wheel are visible but illustrative. The hands take time from the device, separating the idea of a regulator from the convenient animation used to explain it.