The most common application is that of a desktop executive toy. Another use is as an educational physics demonstration, as an example of conservation of momentum and conservation of energy. History The principle demonstrated by the device, the law of impacts between bodies, was first demonstrated by the French physicist Abbé Mariotte in the 17th century. His work on the topic was first presented to the French Academy of Sciences in 1671; it was published in 1673 as Traité de la percussion ou choc des corps ("Treatise on percussion or shock of bodies"). Newton acknowledged Mariotte's work, along with Wren, Wallis and Huygens as the pioneers of experiments on the collisions of pendulum balls, in his Principia. Christiaan Huygens used pendulums to study collisions. His work, De Motu Corporum ex Percussione (On the Motion of Bodies by Collision) published posthumously in 1703, contains a version of Newton's first law and discusses the collision of suspended bodies including two bodies of equal mass with the motion of the moving body being transferred to the one at rest. There is much confusion over the origins of the modern Newton's cradle. Marius J. Morin has been credited as being the first to name and make this popular executive toy. However, in early 1967, an English actor, Simon Prebble, coined the name "Newton's cradle" (now used generically) for the wooden version manufactured by his company, Scientific Demonstrations Ltd. After some initial resistance from retailers, they were first sold by Harrods of London, thus creating the start of an enduring market for executive toys. Later a very successful chrome design for the Carnaby Street store Gear was created by the sculptor and future film director Richard Loncraine. The largest cradle device in the world was designed by MythBusters and consisted of five one-ton concrete and steel rebar-filled buoys suspended from a steel truss. The buoys also had a steel plate inserted in between their two-halves to act as a "contact point" for transferring the energy; this cradle device did not function well because concrete is not elastic so most of the energy was lost to a heat buildup in the concrete. A smaller-scale version constructed by them consists of five chrome steel ball bearings, each weighing , and is nearly as efficient as a desktop model. The cradle device with the largest-diameter collision balls on public display was visible for more than a year in