The First Pendulum Clock
Christiaan Huygens, 1673
No print size passed the check for this piece: at 8 x 10 in, Wrong shape: a 28% crop. We would rather show it than sell a soft print.
See pieces like it you can buyIn 1656 Christiaan Huygens hung a weight on a wire, coupled it to an escapement, and improved the accuracy of clocks by a factor of nearly a hundred in a single stroke. This plate from his Horologium Oscillatorium of 1673 — the founding treatise of precision timekeeping — shows the machine and its geometry together: clockwork on one side, the mathematics of the swing on the other. It is the moment horology stopped being an art of approximation and became a science of the second.
- Maker
- Christiaan Huygens
- Date
- 1673
- Medium of the original
- Plate
- Original held by
- via Wikimedia Commons
- Credit
- via Wikimedia Commons · via Wikimedia Commons
- Rights
- Public domain, verified
- Catalogue number
- PA-00534
Before a size goes on sale, the file is measured against it: pixels per inch at that size, how much of the picture a crop would lose, tone and sharpness. A size that fails is not offered, so there is nothing to choose wrong.
| Size | Why |
|---|---|
| 8 x 10 in | Wrong shape: a 28% crop |
| 8 x 12 in | Wrong shape: a 13% crop |
| 11 x 14 in | Wrong shape: a 27% crop |
| 12 x 16 in | Wrong shape: a 23% crop |
| 12 x 18 in | Wrong shape: a 13% crop |
| 16 x 20 in | Wrong shape: a 28% crop |
| 16 x 24 in | Wrong shape: a 13% crop |
| 18 x 24 in | Wrong shape: a 23% crop |
| 20 x 30 in | Wrong shape: a 13% crop |
| 24 x 30 in | Wrong shape: a 28% crop |
| 24 x 36 in | Wrong shape: a 13% crop |
| 30 x 40 in | Wrong shape: a 23% crop |
| 36 x 48 in | Wrong shape: a 23% crop |
| 40 x 60 in | Wrong shape: a 13% crop |
- Scanned
- 2026-10-07
- Master file
- 818 x 1,417 px, srgb
- Tone
- Darks 135, lights 255 of 255; 73.4% clipped light, 0% clipped dark
- Colour
- 0% vivid
- Sharpness
- 10.35
- Notes
- Pure white on 73% of the image, mostly the sheet itself: it prints as the paper's white
- A plain margin is part of the file (9% of an edge): it prints as part of the picture
The Complication
Huygens’s pendulum, Harrison’s chronometer engravings and the astronomical tower.
All 19 pieces from The Complication
