During the mid 19th century, Louis Poinsot developed a geometric interpretation of the physics of rotating bodies that provided a visual counterpart to Euler’s algebraic equations. Poinsot was a contemporary of Léon Foucault, who invented the gyroscope and whose pendulum experiments provided incontrovertible evidence that the Earth rotates. In the fashion of the day, Poinsot coined the terms polhode and its counterpart, herpolhode, to describe this wobble in the motion of rotating rigid bodies. Poinsot derived these terms from the ancient Greek πόλος pólos (pivot or end of an axis) + ὁδός hodós (path or way)—thus, polhode is the path of the pole.