“THE HOROLOGIUM OSCILLATORIUM OF CHRISTIAN HUYGENS”

Abstract

THREE great works laid the foundation of modern mechanics: Galilei's “Discourses on Two New Sciences”(1638), Huygens's “Horo–logium Oscillatorium”(1673), and Newton's “Philosophise Naturalis Principia Mathematica”(1687). Of these, the second is certainly the least well known, and least accessible to the English reader1. Yet it is more rigorous in the treatment of its subject–matter, more strictly mathematical in style than the others, and it certainly deserves more recognition than has ever been conceded to it. From Huygens's original intention to publish a work on the construction and scientific principles of his pendulum clock (employing a cycloidal pendulum), the work grew and grew over a period of about fifteen years, and finally issued forth in 1673 with much accumulated around its central theme. Unlike most of Huygens's other writings, the work is singularly free from all Cartesian influences. Huygens himself hoped that it would be in direct line with the great work of Galilei, and his hopes were not disappointed. Newton wrote to Oldenburg, the indefatigable secretary of the Royal Society, of his “great satisfaction” with the work, and said he found it “full of very subtile and usefull speculations very worthy of ye Author”. Newton especially admired Huygens's mathematical style, and considered him “the most elegant writer of modern times”.