Léon Foucault pendulum suspended from the roof of the Panthéon, Paris. The experiment caused a sensation in both the learned and popular worlds, and ""Foucault pendulums"" were suspended in major cities across Europe and America and attracted crowds. In the following year he used (and named) the gyroscope as a conceptually simpler experimental proof. In 1855, he received the Copley Medal of the Royal Society for his 'very remarkable experimental researches'. Earlier in the same year he was made "physicien" (physicist) at the imperial observatory at Paris. In September 1855 he discovered that the force required for the rotation of a copper
Foucault pendulum vector diagrams the pendulum is swinging or not. If the bob is not allowed to turn with the support-point one twist of the connecting wire will occur in one day at the pole. If the connection apparatus of the pendulum to the bob and to the support were in a fixed relationship (and the connection not allowed to twist, for example, using a rigid rod pinned into place between two sides of the support), then once the plane of the pendulum swing is established in one direction, that plane would be forced to turn with the support and connection. The Earth's rotation