Cycloidal Pendulum
notes: label: Description
content: In 1816, having been named Superintendent of the U.S. Military Academy Academy, Sylvanus Thayer went to France, to study the methods of instruction at the École Polytechnique, and purchase books and apparatus to be used at West Point. This large and handsome cycloidal pendulum was among his acquisitions. A similar instrument once owned by the French scientist, Jacques-Alexandre Charles (1746-1823), is now in the collections of Musée des Artes et Métiers.
label: Description
content: This instrument was designed to demonstrate the isochronism of a cycloidal pendulum, but in practice it saw little use. Albert E. Church (1807-1878), an 1828 graduate of West Point who spent his career teaching mathematics at that school, recalled that “We had little Apparatus. I remember well a tall Atwood’s machine standing in one corner of the philosophical room, but never saw it put to any use—a cycloidal pendulum, with which we used to amuse ourselves when the professor was late coming in, and a formidable array of brass pulleys with a green silk cord.”
label: Description
content: Ref: Albert E. Church, “Personal Reminiscences of the U.S. Military Academy,” in <i>Twelfth Annual Reunion of the Association of the Graduates of the United States Military Academy</i> (New York, 1881), p. 151.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: France: Île-de-France, Paris
topic: label: Subject
content: Science & Scientific Instruments
setName: label: See more items in
content: Medicine and Science: Physical Sciences
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: United States Military Academy
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: PH.315757
label: catalog number
content: 315757
label: accession number
content: 217544
objectType: label: Object Name
content: pendulum, cycloidal