LYCOS RETRIEVER 
Galileo: Pendulums
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Galileo began experimenting with pendulums after he saw a chandelier swinging in the Pisa Cathedral. He noticed each swing of the chandelier took the same amount of time, even though each swing was shorter than the previous swing. This led to Galileo's discovery of the Law of the Pendulum.
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Shortly thereafter, at age 20, Galileo noticed a lamp swinging overhead while he was in a cathedral. Curious to find out how long it took the lamp to swing back and forth, he used his pulse to time large and small swings. Galileo discovered something that no one else had ever realized: the period of each swing was exactly the same. The law of the pendulum, which would eventually be used to regulate clocks, made Galileo instantly famous.
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Galileo ... noted that a pendulum's swings always take the same amount of time, independently of the amplitude. The story goes that he came to this conclusion by watching the swings of the bronze chandelier in the cathedral of Pisa, using his pulse to time it. While Galileo believed this equality of period to be exact, it is only an approximation appropriate to small amplitudes. It is good enough to regulate a clock, however, as Galileo may have been the first to realize.
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Galileo conducts experiments with a pendulum on the measurement of time increments (see His Experiments: Pendulum). He explains his findings in a letter to Santorio Santorio, a doctor friend in Venice, who then successfully uses a pendulum to measure his patients' pulses.
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Galileo made a number of other important scientific discoveries. He discovered that the rate at which a pendulum swings depends on its length rather than the distance through which it swings. This led to the development of pendulum clocks.
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Pendulums