Galileo’s Pendulum

The range of things that measure time, from living creatures to atomic clocks, brackets Newton's intriguing narrative of time's connections, in the middle of which stands Galileo's famous discovery about pendulums...Science buffs will delight in the links Newton makes in this readable tour of how humanity marks time.
-- Gilbert Taylor Booklist

[A] short, clear and fascinating book about time, our relationship to it and our growing ability to measure it...It takes in along the way Newton, Faraday, Einstein, the one-handed clock of the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence and John Harrison's entry for the Longitude Prize.
-- Financial Times

This delightful short book addresses the problem of time measurement, viewed in its different aspects through history. It is centered on the keen observation made anecdotally in the cathedral of Pisa by Galileo Galilei, when he was only 17, that the time it took the hanging chandelier to complete one oscillation was independent of how far it was swinging...The far-reaching and pervading properties of the harmonic oscillator are presented clearly and concisely as a crucial building block for our understanding of nature in this very interesting and engaging book.
-- Germaine Cornelissen Key Reporter