Some sundials have very fine hour-line detail on the dial plate. Here on the Lennett Square dial the hours are divided into half-hour lines, quarter-hour lines, and 5-minute lines.
The North American Sundial Society held its 2012 conference in Asheville NC, August 16-19. Alice Io Oglesby and Hugh Munro, local hosts and sundial enthusiasts, took NASS members on a sundial tour through Asheville and the rolling hills of western North Carolina to see the vertical dials at Sunny Point Café and the analemmatic dial of the “kitchen garden” at the Biltmore Estate. In Burnsville, NASS members saw the Quilt Block Sundial, one of over 200 colourful quilt block paintings along the North Carolina Quilt Block Trail. NASS was welcomed by the Mayor of Burnsville and had the Quilt Block sundial explained by Bob Hampton, astronomer designer and Martin Weaver artist. The Quilt Block Sundial in Burnsville was a most impressive example of teamwork and community support. Travelling further, Brian Leonard showed the armillary sundial he fabricated and installed in Marshall, NC.
The NASS conference included exciting talks on a colourful “Parallel Time East West Sundial” presented by new NASS member Peggy Gunnerson and shadow alignments at Toshogu Shrine by Barry Duell of the Tokyo International University. Frank King talked about a most unusual circular analemmatic dial he designed for the Metropolitana of Naples (an Italian job). Dr. King was also this year’s recipient of the Sawyer Dialing Prize. Roger Bailey discussed dials of Mallorca and the “Box of Sapphires”, a compendium designed by Ibn al-Shatir in the 14th century. Fred Sawyer gave a most interesting talk on “Projected Refraction Sundials with Ambigram”, and at the NASS dinner on Saturday, he distributed a special gift to NASS participants: a location specific projected refraction sundial with the ambigram showing “CARPE” on the dial and “DIEM” in the projected shadow. Other speakers with interesting presentations included Alice Io Oglesby, Bill Gottesman, Dudley Warner and Ken Clark. Next year’s conference is being planned for Boston.
Photos shown: (Top) NASS conference participants underneath Bob Hampton's Quilt Block Dial; (Bottom Left) NASS members examine Alice Oglesby and Hugh Munro's vertical dial at Sunny Point Cafe; and (Bottom Right) Bob Hampton's Equatorial Dial made from a bent yardstick.
A new sundial project called “Meantime in Greenwich” opened on “Dingle Day” August 6th in Sir Sandford Fleming Park (affectionately known as “Dingle Park”) located in the Halifax Regional Municipality of Nova Scotia. Media artist David Clark created a series of 24 horizontal sundials that surround the Memorial (Dingle) Tower, a site that once had been Fleming's summer home. Visitors to the public exhibit can download a free app onto their phone or iPad and hear an audio story when they approach each sundial. For iPhone users, aiming its camera at the sundial triggers a 3D object to appear on the screen. As Clark describes it, “Each sundial becomes a pedestal for virtual reality. Everybody becomes their own cinema.”
The public art project honors Sir Sandford Fleming, Chief Engineer of the Northern Railway Grand Trunk Railway who devised standard time. His original idea was Cosmic Time, what we now call Universal Time that is independent of longitude. In 1879 he proposed that time be linked to the anti-meridian of Greenwich (180o longitude) and lobbied for the use of time zones at the1884 International Prime Meridian Conference in Washington, D.C. “What he did was wean us away from solar time - he developed the 24 time zones,” said Clark, “I thought an ironic monument to him would be to place 24 sundials across the park.” If one looks closely at these sundials, the hours are labeled in both “Standard Time” and “Daylight Saving Time” with a small graph of the Equation of Time to translate local solar time into Atlantic Zone Time.
Read more about the phone apps, the 24 sundials and about Sir Sandford Fleming, inventor of Standard Time:
At 3pm on August 15th Roger Bailey of the North American Sundial Society will hold a public lecture on the historic Ibn al-Shatir sundial at the Great Falls Library in VA. The Analemma Society proposes to recreate the dial’s design, adapted for the latitude of Observatory Park, The Turner Farm, in Great Falls, VA.
Hopefully this will be the second major dial at Observatory Park maintained by the Analemma Society in conjunction with the Fairfax County Park Authority. The first dial was a commemorative dial designed and built by Tony Moss for the 400th anniversary of Jamestown, VA.
“High on the minaret of the Great Mosque in Damascus is a remarkable sundial created by Ibn al-Shatir in 1371. Through the 10th to 14th centuries the science of astronomy, timekeeping and sundials had advanced in major Moslem centres like Cairo and Damascus. Based on the developing science of timekeeping, Ibn al-Shatir designed a unique instrument that was a breakthrough…The sundial features equal hours rather than the previous system of dividing the day into 12 hours regardless of the seasonal changes.”
Three different time systems are drawn on the dial, reading time from sunrise, sunset and noon. “The dial has reference lines for all five Moslem prayer times, even those at daybreak and nightfall when the sun was well below the horizon. This sundial was the first to use a polar gnomon, parallel to the earth’s axis and pointed north… The dial represents technological changes anticipating the design of sundials created later in the Islamic Middle East and Christian Europe….”
Update: On Saturday July 22nd, less than two weeks after the Henry Moore sundial was stolen, it was recovered by detectives after receiving tips from the British Crimewatch television series. Three young men, all from Essex, have been arrested on suspicion of two counts of theft and are currently in police custody. Read about it at: http://www.artlyst.com/articles/stolen-henry-moore-bronze-sundial-recovered-three-arrested-in-essex
Story:On the 10th of July, 2012 was another significant sundial loss. A 22-inch bronze equatorial dial designed by the famous British sculpture Henry Moore was stolen from the grounds at the Hertfordshire museum in Much Hadham, UK. Police are appealing for any information.
Is it now the part of someone’s private collection? In 2005 thieves stole a Moore bronze statue “Reclining Figure” from the museum. The statue weighed 2 tons, requiring the thieves to use a crane for its removal. Then in 2010 other thieves stole a Moore sketch called “Three Reclining Figures On Pedestals” along with other artist paintings from the Trinity House Paintings on Broadway High Street, Worcestershire.
Because of Henry Moore’s fame as a sculpture and artist, the sundial is valued at £500,000. The small dial built in 1965 was a model for a much larger dial that now resides in Germany. Read about that dial in the forthcoming North American Sundial Society article in The Compendium coming out in this September’s quarterly issue.
Last Updated on Sunday, 22 July 2012 16:54
Ivory Diptych Sundial Unearthed at Jamestown
Posted: Wednesday, 04 July 2012 14:37
At historic Jamestown, Virginia, the first successful English colony in the New World, a rare 17th century ivory sundial was found during recent excavations. You can read about it in Popular Archaeology June-2012
A small ivory diptych sundial was discovered during the Jamestown Rediscovery Archaeological Project dig of soil where a cellar stood as part of the early James Fort. The pocket dial was crafted by Hans Miler, most probably of Nuremberg, Germany. You can see a similar Nuremberg Diptych Sundial from Metropolitan Museum of Art made by Hans Troschel the Elder. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/03.21.38
Michael Lavin, Senior Conservator of the Jamestown Rediscovery Archaeological Project used a Serle Dialing Ruler made by the North American Sundial Society (NASS) to measure the hour lines of the diptych dial, concluding the dial’s latitude was made for approximately 53 degrees. Visit http://www.historicjamestowne.org/the_dig/and view the unearthing of the dial in the video below:
Last Updated on Wednesday, 04 July 2012 14:51
Fischer Dial Dedicated in New Milford, CT
Posted: Tuesday, 19 June 2012 21:26
On Saturday, June 9th 2012, the volunteers of the John J. McCarthy Observatory in New Milford, CT, dedicated a 9-foot stainless steel sundial as the centerpiece of “Galileo’s Garden” adjacent to the John J. McCarthy Observatory. The sundial was built and dedicated in memory of Kathleen Fischer, a sixth-grade science teacher who inspired many students to pursue science.
The sundial is an open armillary, with an adjustable hour band for standard and daylight time. At the tip of the gnomon is a bronze and brass true-size rendering of Galileo’s first telescope, honoring the 400 years since Galileo explored the heavens. The North American Sundial Society was privileged to donate to this effort.
The instrument rests on a one-ton granite disk donated by Goodrich of Danbury, CT. The disk was used in the tooling process for making telescope mirrors and serves as a unique base for the sundail.
The sundial was designed with graceful geometric curves – including catenary curves, parabolas, and circle arcs. And the dial is situated in a flower garden with 60 varieties of sunflowers, part of a student gardening project. Seen with the sundial is a 6-foot model of the sun, located in the center of a six-mile scale solar system that traverses the town of New Milford.
The North American Sundial Society held its 2012 conference in Asheville NC, August 16-19. Alice Io Oglesby and Hugh Munro, local hosts and sundial enthusiasts, took NASS members on a sundial tour through Asheville and the rolling hills of western North Carolina to see the vertical dials at Sunny Point Café and the analemmatic dial of the “kitchen garden” at the Biltmore Estate. In Burnsville, NASS members saw the Quilt Block Sundial, one of over 200 colourful quilt block paintings along the North Carolina Quilt Block Trail. NASS was welcomed by the Mayor of Burnsville and had the Quilt Block sundial explained by Bob Hampton, astronomer designer and Martin Weaver artist. The Quilt Block Sundial in Burnsville was a most impressive example of teamwork and community support. Travelling further, Brian Leonard showed the armillary sundial he fabricated and installed in Marshall, NC.
A new sundial project called “Meantime in Greenwich” opened on “Dingle Day” August 6th in Sir Sandford Fleming Park (affectionately known as “Dingle Park”) located in the Halifax Regional Municipality of Nova Scotia. Media artist David Clark created a series of 24 horizontal sundials that surround the Memorial (Dingle) Tower, a site that once had been Fleming's summer home. Visitors to the public exhibit can download a free app onto their phone or iPad and hear an audio story when they approach each sundial. For iPhone users, aiming its camera at the sundial triggers a 3D object to appear on the screen. As Clark describes it, “Each sundial becomes a pedestal for virtual reality. Everybody becomes their own cinema.”
The public art project honors Sir Sandford Fleming, Chief Engineer of the Northern Railway Grand Trunk Railway who devised standard time. His original idea was Cosmic Time, what we now call Universal Time that is independent of longitude. In 1879 he proposed that time be linked to the anti-meridian of Greenwich (180o longitude) and lobbied for the use of time zones at the1884 International Prime Meridian Conference in Washington, D.C. “What he did was wean us away from solar time - he developed the 24 time zones,” said Clark, “I thought an ironic monument to him would be to place 24 sundials across the park.” If one looks closely at these sundials, the hours are labeled in both “Standard Time” and “Daylight Saving Time” with a small graph of the Equation of Time to translate local solar time into Atlantic Zone Time.
At 3pm on August 15th Roger Bailey of the North American Sundial Society will hold a public lecture on the historic Ibn al-Shatir sundial at the Great Falls Library in VA. The Analemma Society proposes to recreate the dial’s design, adapted for the latitude of Observatory Park, The Turner Farm, in Great Falls, VA.
At historic Jamestown, Virginia, the first successful English colony in the New World, a rare 17th century ivory sundial was found during recent excavations. You can read about it in 
On Saturday, June 9th 2012, the volunteers of the John J. McCarthy Observatory in New Milford, CT, dedicated a 9-foot stainless steel sundial as the centerpiece of “Galileo’s Garden” adjacent to the John J. McCarthy Observatory. The sundial was built and dedicated in memory of Kathleen Fischer, a sixth-grade science teacher who inspired many students to pursue science.