Foucault, Jean Bernard Léon (1819-1868)
French physicist who was the first to show how a pendulum can track Earth's rotation (see Foucault pendulum). He also invented the gyroscope (1852), showed that the speed of light is less in water than in air (1850), and improved the mirrors of reflecting telescopes. More important even than his perfection of the silver-on-glass process was his development of a simple technique, now known as the Foucault knife-edge test, for determining the exact figure of a mirror.
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