As an astronomer and mathematician, Leon Foucault wished to demonstrate in a visible manner that the Earth rotates. While other scientists had concentrated on the time of the pendulum's swing, he focused on the plane of the pendulum. He became convinced that he would be able to demonstrate the Earth's rotation by using a pendulum with a special support. He designed a support that let his pendulum move in any direction without any resistance. On January 3, 1851, in the basement of his home, Foucault made his first experiment with such a pendulum. He constructed a pendulum by attaching a 1.98-meter-long wire to the ceiling of his basement. He had attached a five-kilogram bob to the end of the wire. In order to start his pendulum swinging from complete inertia, he tied the bob to the wall with a cotton rope. Next, he used a candle to burn through the rope. Unfortunately, the wire broke and ruined the experiment.

On January 8, he again tried his experiment. This time the wire held, and within a half hour displacement of the pendulum was evident. He had mounted a pointer on the floor so that it furnished a point of reference. At the invitation of Francois Arago, director of the Paris Observatory, Foucault repeated his experiment in the Meridian Room of the observatory before a large audience of scientists. For this experiment, Foucault constructed a pendulum that had an eleven-meter-long wire and used the same five-kilogram bob that he had used in his basement experiments. The longer wire enabled the pendulum to continue to swing for a longer period of time. Foucault's demonstration was a resounding success. Then, he did yet another experiment with his pendulum. This one took place at the Pantheon in Paris and brought him worldwide recognition. The bob of the pendulum installed at the Pantheon weighed twenty-eight kilograms and was suspended from the dome of the building on a wire measuring sixty-seven meters in length. The pendulum's plane rotated in a clockwise direction at a rate of 11œ per hour. At the end of eight hours, the pendulum appeared to be swinging in a direction at a right angle to the original direction. It made a full circle in 32.7 hours. Physicists had already established that once a pendulum began to swing, it did not change its direction. Therefore, the Earth had to be rotating. Foucault's pendulum experiment was the first indoor demonstration that proved the Earth's rotation.

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