George Atwood - Atwood’s Machine from A treatise on the Rectilinear Motion and Rotation of Bodies (Cambridge, 1784)
1784
- Title
- George Atwood - Atwood’s Machine from A treatise on the Rectilinear Motion and Rotation of Bodies (Cambridge, 1784)
- Collection
- Caltech Images Collection
- Series
- Rare Book Photographs
- Identifier
- RB-GA1784-1
- Dates
- 1784
- Extents
- 1 photographs (negative)
- Abstract
- As mathematics tutor at Cambridge University in the 1770s and 80s, George Atwood was responsible for introducing students to Newtonianism. To help with this task -- and to quell lingering debates about inertia and the living force of matter -- Atwood fashioned a machine that soon became known eponymously. The machine employed an ingenious system of weights, pulleys and a pendulum clock which demonstrated Newton’s laws of motion.