Kater's pendulum minutes per day slower than at Paris, or equivalently the length of a pendulum with a swing of one second there was 1¼ Paris "lines", or 2.6 mm, shorter than at Paris. It was realized by the scientists of the day, and proven by Isaac Newton in 1687, that this was due to the fact that the Earth was not a perfect sphere but slightly oblate; it was thicker at the equator because of the Earth's rotation. Since the surface was farther from the Earth's center at Cayenne than at Paris, gravity was weaker there. Since that time pendulums began
Earth's rotation gathered support for the theory of the rotation of the Earth. Earth's rotation implies that the Equator bulges and the geographical poles are flattened. In his "Principia", Newton predicted this flattening would occur in the ratio of 1:230, and pointed to the pendulum measurements taken by Richer in 1673 as corroboration of the change in gravity, but initial measurements of meridian lengths by Picard and Cassini at the end of the 17th century suggested the opposite. However, measurements by Maupertuis and the French Geodesic Mission in the 1730s established the oblateness of Earth, thus confirming the positions of both Newton