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 transport. There are numerous Foucault pendulums at universities, science museums, and the like throughout the world. The United Nations headquarters in New York City has one; the largest is at the Oregon Convention Center. The experiment has also been carried out at the South Pole, where it was assumed that the rotation of the earth would have maximum effect at the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station, in a six-story staircase of a new station under construction. The pendulum had a length of 33 m and the bob weighed 25 kg. The location was ideal: no moving air could disturb the pendulum,