Original Foucault Pendulum
The first public exhibition of a Foucault pendulum took place in February 1851 in the Meridian of the Paris Observatory. A few weeks later Foucault made his most famous pendulum when he suspended a 28 kg brass-coated lead bob with a 67 meter long wire from the dome of the Panthéon, Paris. The plane of the pendulum's swing rotated clockwise 11° per hour, making a full circle in 32.7 hours. The original bob used in 1851 at the Panthéon was moved in 1855 to the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers in Paris. A second temporary installation was made for the 50th anniversary in 1902.
During museum reconstruction in the 1990s the original pendulum was temporarily displayed at the Panthéon (1995), but was later returned to the Musée des Arts et Métiers before it reopened in 2000. On April 6, 2010 the cable suspending the bob in the Musée des Arts et Métiers snapped, causing irreparable damage to the pendulum and to the marble flooring of the museum. An exact copy of the original pendulum has been swinging permanently since 1995 under the dome of the Panthéon, Paris.
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