% Chridlm.i Huygens, " 20T 
which tie had received^ and which probably contained an outline 
of the answers he had made to them. 
What follows relates no doubt to the statement found in the 
account of experiments made at Florence, under the title of 
Saggi di Naturali Eooperiensi,, which had appeared in 1667> 
Qui vero Galileo primas hie deferre conantur, si tentasse eum^ 
non vero perfecisse inventum dicant, illius magis qitam meae 
laudi detrahere videntur, quippe qui rem eandem meliori quam 
ille eventu investigaverim. Cum autem vel ab ipso Galileo^ vel 
ab ipsius filio, quod nuper voluit vir quidam eruditus, ad exi- 
turn perductum fuisse contendunt, horologiumque ejusmodi re 
ipsa adhibitum, nescio quomodo creditiim sibi iri sperent, cum 
vix verisimile sit adeo utile inventum ignotum manere potuisse 
annis totis octo (16495-^1657,) donee a me in lucem ederetur.” 
{Horol. Oscillator.^ p. 32.) The Secretary of the Academy 
del Cimento, then Count Lorenzo Magalotti, had said, p. 22. of 
the that the academicians (in order to measure the 
time accurately,) had “ thought proper to add a pendulum to 
a clock, after the example of what Galileo had found out the 
first of alf and his son, Vincenzio Galileo, had put in practice 
as early as 1649.” The claims of Galileo to the invention could 
not possibly be asserted in stronger terms. A figure is added 
of the clock, as employed by the academicians of Florence, but 
this only shows the external appearance of the instrument ; be- 
sides they do not tell us whether this agrees exactly with the 
original, as constructed by Vincenzio Galileo, and pendulum- 
clocks existed already at the period of this publication in 
Italy, where the description by Huygens was likewise every 
where known. 
This is not all. In 1680 appeared a man, who roundly de- 
nied that Huygens ever made any discovery about clocks at all. 
This was no other than Becker, well known for having origi- 
nally suggested the system which so long prevailed under the 
name of Stahl. In February of that year, he presented to the 
Royal Society of London a treatise De Nova Temporis dime- 
* This work, in folio, was translated into Latin, with notes, by Musschen- 
brbek, and published in 1731, under the title of Ttntamina Naturatia Academito 
(ffci in (juarto. ' ■ 
