Léon Foucault Léon Foucault Jean Bernard Léon Foucault (; 18 September 1819 – 11 February 1868) was a French physicist best known for his demonstration of the Foucault pendulum, a device demonstrating the effect of the Earth's rotation. He also made an early measurement of the speed of light, discovered eddy currents, and is credited with naming the gyroscope. Foucault was the son of a publisher in Paris, where he was born on 18 September 1819. After an education received chiefly at home, he studied medicine, which he abandoned in favour of physics due to a blood phobia. He first directed his
SS City of Manchester (1851) SS City of Manchester (1851) The SS "City of Manchester" was an iron-hulled single screw liner built 1851 by Tod & McGregor, Glasgow, Scotland and the second such ship owned by the Inman Line (officially the Liverpool and Philadelphia Steam Ship Company). It was an improved version of their first ship "City of Glasgow" which had been launched a year earlier. Steerage passengers were carried beginning in 1852. The "City of Manchester" was chartered to the French government during the Crimean War, and resumed Inman voyages in 1856. She departed London for Calcutta 24 August 1857 as a transport as