Foucault pendulum honored in Google doodle Foucault Pendulum (Google) Wednesday's Google Doodle celebrates the life of the nineteenth-century French physicist Léon Foucault by featuring one of his most prominent inventions: the Foucault pendulum. Born on September 18, Foucault created the pendulum in his attempt to demonstrate the Earth's rotation. According to Time magazine, Google's Doodle explains two phenomena discovered by the Frechman. First, it shows how the Earth moves under the pendulum. Second, it shows how the speed of the pendulum's apparent movement depends on where the experiment is held. You can check out a real life version of the pendulum below.