Christiaan Huygens, the physicist and astronomer who
discovered Saturn's rings, patented the first pendulum
clock in the mid-seventeenth century. For years, his
creation was called by the unimaginative name "the weight
and pendulum clock."

Then, in 1876, Henry Clay Work wrote a popular song about
his grandfather's clock and unwittingly renamed the
invention. As a result of his song, called "Grandfather's
Clock," people began to call the 200-year-old invention
"grandfather clock," showing once again music's strong
effect on society.