De Soto's comments are remarkably correct regarding the definitions of acceleration (acceleration was a rate of change of motion (velocity) in time) and the observation that acceleration would be negative during ascent. Discourses such as these spread throughout Europe, shaping the work of Galileo Galilei and others, and helped in laying the foundation of kinematics. Galileo deduced the equation in his work geometrically, using the Merton rule, now known as a special case of one of the equations of kinematics. Galileo was the first to show that the path of a projectile is a parabola. Galileo had an understanding of centrifugal force and gave a correct definition of momentum. This emphasis of momentum as a fundamental quantity in dynamics is of prime importance. He measured momentum by the product of velocity and weight; mass is a later concept, developed by Huygens and Newton. In the swinging of a simple pendulum, Galileo says in "Discourses" that "every momentum acquired in the descent along an arc is equal to that which causes the same moving body to ascend through the same arc." His analysis on projectiles indicates that Galileo had grasped the first law and the second law of motion. He did not generalize and make them applicable to bodies not subject to the earth's gravitation. That step was Newton's contribution. The term "inertia" was used by Kepler who applied it to bodies at rest. (The first law of motion is now often called the law of inertia.) Galileo did not fully grasp the third law of motion, the law of the equality of action and reaction, though he corrected some errors of Aristotle. With Stevin and others Galileo also wrote on statics. He formulated the principle of the parallelogram of forces, but he did not fully recognize its scope. Galileo also was interested by the laws of the pendulum, his first observations of which were as a young man. In 1583, while he was praying in the cathedral at Pisa, his attention was arrested by the motion of the great lamp lighted and left swinging, referencing his own pulse for time keeping. To him the period appeared the same, even after the motion had greatly diminished, discovering the isochronism of the pendulum. More careful experiments carried out by him later, and described in his Discourses, revealed the period of oscillation varies with the square root of length but is independent of the mass the pendulum. Thus we arrive at René Descartes, Isaac Newton, Gottfried Leibniz, et al.; and the evolved forms of the equations of motion that begin to be recognized as the modern ones.