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
Foucault pendulum vector diagrams along with the rotation of the Earth and has an angular velocity equal to that of the Earth's angular velocity. Once the bob is displaced from the central axis of the pendulum and then released there no longer is a force acting on the bob that causes it to revolve about the central axis of the pendulum and rotate (turn) with the Earth. The point of significance is that the force imparting an angular velocity to the pre-released bob is no longer acting on the swinging bob. At the North Pole, this force takes one day for the direction of