45 
hy Christian Huygens. 
would infallibly have had some intelligence of it. Among the 
latter was Blauw, afterwards one of the commissioners appointed 
by the States to e^^mine Galileo’s proposals about the longi- 
tude ; in their answers, we find remarks on the imperfections of 
Galileo’s proposed pendulum, but not a word of their having 
ever heard of a better method. 
I think it right to inform the class, that among the letters ad- 
dressed to Huygens, I found one containing a claim to the dis- 
covery from a totally different quarter. It is written by Mr 
Carcavi, a man of rank and merit at Paris, who became one of the 
first members of the Jcademie des Sciences^ at its establishment. 
He relates having seen an inhabitant of Angouleme, who told 
him he was in possession of a pendulum clock, made as far back 
as 1615 or 1616 by a German, for the Queen Marie de Medi- 
cis, whose departure, however, had prevented its coming to her ; 
that the artist dying, he had purchased it from his heirs. I 
mention this as an insulated fact, for as no writer has preserved 
it, and as subsequent letters of the same gentleman do not allude 
to it any farther, we have no means of judging whether or not the 
report deserves any credit at all, and whether what was seen 
was really a pendulum, by whom it was invented, and how the 
whole invention came to be buried in oblivion. 
Having now gone over the whole evidence, as at first propo- 
sed, I believe I shall be warranted in coming to the following 
conclusions : 
That Galileo, after having discovered the properties of the 
pendulum, and the theory of its vibrations, was likewise the 
first who showed its use in measuring determinate intervals, and 
indicating the minute subdivisions of time, an example which 
was soon followed by all astronomers. That Galileo had thought 
on a means by which the pendulum might itself indicate the 
number of oscillations it had performed, without the necessity of 
counting them, and of course constantly watching it : That he 
actually conceived the idea of connecting the pendulum with a 
set of wheels for that purpose, which, however, he only threw 
out on paper, without putting it in practice, and that he was 
totally ignorant of the principle of reciprocal action between the 
crown-wheel and pallets, by which the former is regulated, 
whilst the latter are prevented from returning to rest : That the 
