San Francisco, California. August 17-20, 2000
Our Sixth Annual
The NASS 2000 Conference was held at the Cathedral Hill Hotel in San Francisco, California, August 17 to 20. Our host and conference organizer was Ron Anthony who, aided by Carl Trost and Mark Gingrich put together a marvelous visit to this beautiful city and bay area. This was our most western conference site in the brief history of NASS.
 Claude Hartman chats with Jeanne & Bob Haselby |
 Peter Mikkelsen displays his copy of Leybourn's Dialling |
Warm conversations began among those attending the Thursday evening reception with refreshments. There was a drawing for door prizes of a portable universal ring sundial from Bruno Pichler and an enameled NASS logo pin.
Early Friday we gathered to greet old friends and make new ones while munching on a continental breakfast and looking at several displays. Many sundials and other materials had been laid out for viewing. Some of the materials were for sale, including the new NASS Repository CD. An unusual collection of rare dialing books was also shown.
Fred Sawyer formally opened the conference at 9 am by welcoming everyone. He then presented the pocket sundial door prize to Paul Lapp. Bob Kellogg won the NASS logo pin.
Fred explained that the logo pin was for sale and proceeds would help support the new annual Sawyer Dialing Prize. This led to his explaining that on the event of his retirement, he and his wife Phil had set up a fund for the award. He then explained some of the details of the trophy sundial made by Tony Moss. This dial was on display for all to examine.
Native San Franciscan, Carl Trost, opened the formal talks. He treated us with his slides and stories of some of the large sundials we would see on the tour. The pictures of the 1913 opening of Ingleside Terraces' sundial with a 28-foot gnomon and dancing maidens on the 34-foot diameter time ring impressed us all.
Claiming the largest "organic" sundial, Bob Kellogg presented his work with "Amazing Maize Maze". This is a cornfield maze that was done this summer at Long Acre farm near Rochester, New York. Hedges of corn were aligned for the azimuth of the sun at different hours. In addition, flagpoles carrying an annulus called the "eye of Kala" (Hawaiian sun god) threw shadows on large posters for times to within minutes. There were a large number of "oohs" as he showed an aerial view of the cornfield with its maze and a sun face.
 The Amazing Maize Maze |
 Mac Oglesby with a student sundial |
Mac Oglesby showed sundials made by 4th through 6th grade students. He worked with students in mounting printed dials he designed that used an "unfolded analemma" he had printed for them. As he put it, in his part of the country "we only see the sun 15% of the time" so he had them try to make a sundial that looks good. There were numerous questions about the design of the dials as well as the fun of working with kids.
Paul Lapp then reminded us that "Toves don't do Trig" in his explanation of the causes of the EOT. He said he tried to do so with a "stick and mud" approach that Toves would appreciate. This led to some "beach ball" geometry in order to explain spherical relationships.
After a short break, Fred introduced the new NASS Repository CD. He had it running on a laptop so he could show how the many electronic features worked as well as the wealth of materials stored. All of the journals and programs that have been sent to NASS members in the past are there, plus the BSS glossary and several larger works, in a form allowing full color photos, an every-word search facility and having many links built in. Most of us were amazed that so much could be on the CD with only a third of its capacity being used. There is room for a lot of future materials. (See the description in the Compendium). Fred said that he spent over a hundred hours putting it together. Some of us wondered if it could have taken so little. My what treasures retirement can bring!
Tom Kreyche brought the morning session to a dramatic close with a demonstration of his Helioscope program. This features spectacular graphics to present many types of information similar to The Dialist's Companion program. He commented on the difficulties and limitations he has faced in the continued development. The beta version is included on the NASS CD and can be seen on his web site, www.blueskies.com.
After a lunch provided by the Cathedral Hill Hotel, the business meeting of NASS, the Annual General Meeting, was held. Minutes of the meeting are in the December issue of The Compendium.
We then resumed with some informal presentations.
 Lunch at the Cathedral Hill Hotel |
 Ken Clark and the dialist paraphernalia |
Ken Clark explained his display of his "Dialist" T-shirt. He developed the pattern to join a list of hobby patterns. The patterns were also shown on note cards, a coffee mug and wall plaques.
Woody Sullivan opened with a presentation of the model of the Mars sundial. He had an exact model of the proposed color calibration card which a future Mars lander would carry. The sixty gram model was little more than three inches square with a vertical gnomon of about two inches topped with a ball that looked strangely like one of Woody's baseballs. We handled the model carefully by its edges to inspect the markings. It carries a motto inspired by Bill Nye, "Two Worlds, One Sun". Sundial markings will be superimposed on transmitted images after a successful landing.
The afternoon formal talks began at 3pm as Carl Trost returned for a presentation of his work to restore a significant sculpture at the Children's Hospital Oakland Research Institute (CHORI). Crafted in 1928 by Robert Treat Paine, it shows a life sized kneeling youth holding a horizontal shield and is attached to a large stone. A moving company moved and placed the sculpture with the guidance of Carl. Even though the sun was not shining, his prior measurements with homemade devices allowed an accurate alignment.
Allan Pratt showed a larger version of his "Azimeter" that he had shown at the conference last year. This is a meridian finding device he made with a large protractor and using the sun's azimuth. Both Carl and Allan showed what could be done with inexpensive materials by using a lot of creativity.
A standard time dial patented by Yabashi in 1971 formed the beginning of a talk by Fred Sawyer. The method described by Yabashi seemed more like trial and error than theory and this led to an analysis in which he was able to show it was impossible! However, this also led to what was possible and produced the "Sawyer Equant". Ron Anthony printed a horizontal equant dial of about eight-inch square using this design on metal. Ron had added a scale around the perimeter that took advantage of the equal angle nature to adjust for the EOT and longitude. Fred showed the operation of this dial and it was displayed for us to examine.
Mark Gingrich presented the last formal session of the day. He presented the problems facing us as the earth's rotation gradually slows. The chaotic nature and accumulating size of this has led some to propose dropping the leap second in favor of a uniform standard time. The difficult correction would then be passed on to the sundial. Although this means only one minute by the year 2100 other predictions such as the abolishment of time zones sounded much more drastic.
After the conference dinner, Fred Sawyer announced the presentation of the first annual Sawyer Dialing Prize to Fer J. deVries "in recognition of his many years of dedication to dialing, and in gratitude for his development of Zonwvlak and his always helpful encouragement and support of the global dialing community." As Fred raised the certificate for us all to see, many of us saw for the first time a picture of the one who has helped so many of us.
Fer could not attend, so he had sent a letter that was read by Mac Oglesby. He asked that the money that accompanied the prize be donated in his name to the University of California Regents for use as a one-time prize fund for U.C. Berkeley's Architecture 140 course in which students are required to make a sundial.
Before we left for the evening, another door prize was drawn. Susan Schilke's name was drawn for another Pichler pocket sundial. Then there was still time to enjoy an evening in the "city by the bay".
The [Saturday Sundial Tour] of dials in the Bay area.Sunday morning started with another breakfast of assorted fruits and muffins in the meeting room. Claude Hartman opened the formal sessions by describing how he used a computer assisted drawing (CAD) program in order to design an azimuth sundial. The distributors of the Mexican beer, Sol, wanted a sundial placemat for the summer solstice. Claude used the side of the beer bottle as the vertical gnomon. However, this made design difficult by shifting the center around the edge of the bottle. CAD made plotting computed azimuths easy. Then by taking the average of positions for different seasons, hourlines over several latitudes were drawn.
Mac Oglesby shared with us photographs of his summer trip to Britain that included a visit to Tony Moss. At his shop he etched the dial plates for the unique polar dial he had been displaying. East and West plates are rotated 45 degrees from facing noon thereby catching more of the sun close to the horizon.
 Mac shows his polar dial to Warren Thom and Jim Holland |
 Ron Anthony shows his bifilar and equant dials to John Schilke |
Fred Sawyer showed how to place the hour numerals around a sundial so that simple interpolation between them gives precise time, using what he refers to as Oudemans' Curve. He discussed a paper by Holliday in a recent BSS Bulletin and compared it to a paper done a century ago by J.A.C. Oudemans.
How do you make a sculpture with a hole for the beam of sunlight on the date of a special occasion? Warren Thom showed his experimentation with Styrofoam blocks holding bamboo skewers at the computed angles. An impressive array resulted when many such "rays" were added.
Using the computer to assist sundial design continued to be a common theme as Bob Kellogg compared the use of Matlab, Scilab and Excel 97. Both the expensive Matlab and the free Scilab showed a ragged screen output. Excel has the sometimes-clumsy references to cells and columns rather than a familiar mathematical form. However, its graphing function printed quite smooth. He said that both Matlab and Scilab could use arrays and show complicated plots whereas Excel is perhaps simple and quick.
Ron Anthony followed the discussion of CAD use by showing his use of programming inside the DeltaCAD program. Many of these macros have now been posted on the NASS web site.
Carl Trost drew our gathering to an end with a few more San Francisco tales and André Bouchard invited NASS to Montreal, Canada for our 2001 Conference.
