Foucault's gyroscope
Experiment in 1852 to demonstrate the Earth's rotation / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Foucault gyroscope was a gyroscope created by French physicist Léon Foucault in 1852, conceived as a follow-up experiment to his pendulum in order to further demonstrate the Earth's rotation.[1][2][3][4]
Foucault felt that the results of his famous pendulum experiment had been misunderstood. He therefore endeavored to create an apparatus with a "body freely suspended by its center of gravity and rotating around one of its principal axes", allowing the study of a plane with "absolute directional stability".[5] The mechanical precision of Foucault's gyroscope allowed this to be proven clearly to the scientific establishment, and the gyroscope became a widely popular instrument.[6]