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The NASS Conference comes early this year. Register now for the 28th annual NASS Conference in Ann Arbor, Michigan June 8-11, 2023
KensingtonHotel, Ann Arbor Michigan |
Ann Arbor is best known as the home of the sprawling University of Michigan with its architecture, quadrangles, and bustling student life. Yet, it also boasts of great art, science, and archeological museums, picturesque gardens, and fantastic shopping. And don't forget that The Henry Ford Museum and his Greenfield Village are just a half-hour away.
The conference starts Thursday afternoon (4:3pm - 6:30pm) June 8, with an opening reception, introductions, and door prizes. Friday, we will tour local sundials via motor coach. Besides seven sundials, and the Matthaei Botanical Gardens, we will visit the Detroit Observatory. It houses a historic transit telescope that played a pivotal role in the conversion to standard time, and the ‘death’ of sundials everywhere. Saturday will be filled with a full slate of presentations. The day will conclude with the conference dinner. We will conclude Sunday (around 1:00pm) with more speakers and the NASS annual general meeting. Please plan to stay for the entire agenda. We may need to follow COVID protocols. Please be prepared to wear a mask.
We will be staying at the Kensington Hotel, 3500 South State Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48108. Phone (734) 761-7800. You must call this number and specify that you are attending the NASS conference to reserve your room.
Our conference room rate is $159/night plus tax. If you call, this rate will be good for four days before and after the conference. Parking is free. Please let us know (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) when you make your reservation at this hotel so we can adjust the number of allocated rooms, if needed. We want to be sure we have rooms for everyone.
If you have sundials, photos, books, etc. that you would like to display, please let us know so that we can arrange to have some table space available. We will try to allocate ½ table per display. Plan to bring your projects to show.
We have two registration plans. Select a registration option for each attendee. Note that meals on the Partial Option are only Thursday Reception hors d’oeuvres, Friday Tour Lunch and Saturday Conference Dinner. The Partial Option does not include admission to the general sessions.
| Full | Partial | |
| Registration, reception & door prizes, Thurdsay | X | X |
| Bus Tour and Lunch, Friday | X | X |
| Talks, Breakfast, Lunch & Breaks, Sunday | X | |
| Conference Dinner, Saturday | X | X |
| Talks, Breakfast & Breaks, Sunday | X | |
| Admin Costs, etc. | X | X |
Note: We will be celebrating NASS’ 30th Anniversary, and also the 100th Anniversary of the invention of the Bifilar Sundial !
Download the Attached Registration Form you may send a US dollar check payable to NASS and drawn on a US bank for the registration. Send the form and funds to: Fred Sawyer, 27 Ninas Way, Manchester CT 06040 USA. Or email the registration info and vaccination statement, and sen US dollars via PayPal to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
 NASS Register Ann Arbor 2023 .pdf | [ ] | 145 kB |
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The 27th annual meeting of the North American Sundial Society was held at the Holiday Inn – Vanderbilt in Nashville from 11-14 August. The Thursday night social included meeting old friends, exchanging stories about sundials, and for a lucky dozen-plus attendees, receiving sundial books and related door prizes. One of the highlights of Friday’s sundial tour was seeing the symbolic Armillary Sphere at the Tennessee Governor’s Residence. There are three red enameled tomatoes (state fruit) for stars in the state flag, an eastern box turtle (state reptile), tulip poplar (state tree) branches at the north end of the gnomon, and a mockingbird (state bird), resting in the branches.
The NASS group also visited the Vanderbilt Equatorial Dial (NASS Registry #583), Sundial Park (#1055), a number of dials at Cheekwood Botanical Gardens, including a noteable dodecahedral dial (#1051). The tour concluded visiting Montgomery Academy to see a vertical dial designed by Kenneth Lynch & Sons with the help of Fred Sawyer in 1999 (#425).
While at the Governor's Residence, the NASS Group photo was snapped:
2022 NASS Conference Group Photo. From left to right and front to back: Paul Ulbrich, Tish Grant, George Perkins, Fred Sawyer, Len Berggren, Phil Sawyer, Jack Aubert, Will Grant, Marvin Taylor, Bob Kellogg, Pam Morris, Frank King, Jeff Kretsch, Bill Thibault, Sarah Montgomery, Steve Johnson, Gloria Mielke, Aaron Montgomery, Betsy Wilson, George Wilson, Phyllis Montgomery, Joyce Robinson, Dave Robinson, Mark Montgomery, Jeff Brewer. Not shown: Susan Haynes and Marc Boone.
| 2022_NASS_Conference_Nashville.pdf | [ ] | 1659 kB |
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The North American Sundial Society, after by-passing the 2020 Conference due to Covid restrictions, held the 26th annual meeting from August 5th - 8th at the Hilton Garden Inn, Center City, Philadelphia. The venue was similar to past conferences: Thursday night social and door prizes for attendees, Friday a bus tour of 11 sundials in the Philadelphia area, Saturday sundial presentations and annual dinner, finishing on Sunday with more sundial presentations and the annual general meeting (AGM).The dial tour took us walking through Philadelphia parks and arboratums and visits to University of Pennsylvania, Swarthmore College, and Haverford College.
At Swarthmore we saw the modern vertical declining dial on Kohlberg Hall, designed by Martin Cowan. Frederick Orthlieb, professor and chair of the Dept of Engineering at Swarthmore "had a part in locating the bent-plate gnomon so as to give correct indications on the vertical wall. As installed, the gnomon's indicating edge (which lies on a Polar Axis) casts quite a short shadow in Autumn and Winter and requires some observing skill to make a close estimate of indicated time, but in Spring and Summer the longer shadow moves over the granite hour marks very plainly."
For the annual group photo attendees gathered around the "Point Where Things Change", a N-S meridian dial commissioned in 2001 by the Redevelopment Authority of the City of Philadelphia and designed by Michael Grothusen. The dial is on the grounds of Tasepoint Corporate Headquarters.
From Left to Right: Bill Gottesman, Joyce Robinson, Pam Morris, David Robinson, Bob Kellogg, George Wilson, Jack Aubert, Will Grant, Betsy Wilson, Jim Holland, Bill Thibault, Art Paque, Tish Grant, Fred Sawyer, Philomena Sawyer, Phyllis Montgomery, Jeff Kretsch , Mark Montgomery, Marvin Taylor, Zoon Nguyen, Kate Aubert, Pat O'Hearn, Roger Dignard, Paul Ulbrich.
| 2021_NASS_Conference_Philadelphia.pdf | [ ] | 0 kB |
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Visiting Cranmer Park and Sundial in the Rain |
The North American Sundial Society convened in Denver, CO from June 20th - 23rd. Atendees tour the city for sundials including the Kent Denver School's astrometric tower that shows a pinhole image of the sunthroughout the year. And of course there was a stop at Cranmer Park to see the new plaza and restored Equatorial sundial. Does it matter that we toured this dial in the pouring rain? At the Hyatt Hotel safely indoors from the weather NASS speakers presented a wide range of topics including "Is there room for Sundials in Modern Pop Culture by Shelby and Will Grant. Take a look at your next favorite British TV show and see if you can find a sundial. Bill Gottesman talked about a sculpture concept based on shadow cones and was kind enough to present to each of the attendees with their own "Shadowstice" 3D printed sculpture.
The theme of conference talks seemed to center around the shape of sundial gnomons. Frank King, chairman of the BSS, discussed a range of consequences of using gnomons with various cross sections, while Steve Lelievre presented his latest version of a Foster Lambert dial witha self-supporting gnomon of elliptical cross section, showing an example that he 3D printed. Then Fred Sawyer described a new polar envelope dial that casts a very wide shadow, showing that for a range of latitudes you can create a gnomon where both shadow edges can be used to tell the time. Both the Foster Lambert and Polar Envelope dials have simple rotational adjustment allowing easy and precise correction for the Equation of Time.
This year's Sawyer Dialing Prize went to Denis Savoie for his long career in education, research and publications related to in gnomonics and his outstanding portfolio of public sundial designs and restorations.
Attendees of the June 2019 NASS Conference in Denver
| 2019_NASS_Conference_Denver.pdf | [ ] | 0 kB |
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The North American Sundial Society held their annual sundial conference in Pittsburgh, a four day affair for gnomonists to convene and share their enthusiasm for all things sundials. This conference was special as the NASS celebrated the society's 25th anniversary. Starting in 1993 with only a handful of dialing enthusiasts, the society has grown to over 250 members extending from North America to all parts of the globe. For this conference NASS members convened from around the world representing countries of Canada, the United Kingdom, Brazil and Australia. Scheduled to attend but intervened by last minute issues preventing their attendance were dialists from Mexico and Italy. All came with one objective - to share their enthusiasm for sundials.
On Thursday evening Aug 16th the dialists gathered at the Garden Hilton in downtown Pittsburgh to participate in drawings for assorted door prizes including sundials and books on dialing. On Friday all boarded a charter bus to view the sundials of Pittsburgh, taking a tour that included a large steel equatorial designed and built by Anthony Vitale, a multi-faced dial at Old Economy Village dating to 1825, and a dial commemorating the battle at Bushy Run in 1793 that was found at the site of the Fort Pitt Block House during its 1894 restoration by the Pittsburgh Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution who still own and preserve the structure and the sundial. The tour included the dial at Frick Fine Arts Museum (near the geenhouse), the Riverfron Park Sewickley analemmatic (human) sundial, and the large octagonal horizontal sundial at Homewood Cemetery.
On Saturday and Sunday attendees listed to presentations on ring dials (with a diverson into the history of solving cubic equations), helical sundials (and 3D printing), viking sunstones (with a description of the birefracting material calcite), lunar sundials (Sciathericum Seleniacum), van Schooten and Dialing Scales (published in 1657), Time for Rita's (a vertical declining dial designed for an ice cream store in Elizabethtown, PA), and zenith days below the Tropic of Capricorn (and a year-long photograph of the analemma over the El Cerrito pyramid in Querétaro, Mexico),and much, much more. On Saturday evening the Sawyer Dialing Prize was awarded this year to Gianpiero Casalegno from Italy for his achievements in harnessing modern ditital technology to the benefit of tradional dialists around the world. The prize includes an elegant Spectra Sundial by Artisan Industrials (Jim Tallman) and a cash award. Gian has chosen to given the cash award as a donation to the Bellingham Mural Project lead by Sasch Stephens. The dial will be dedicated on the coming equinox, Sept. 22.
NASS members enjoyed this year's conference and are now planning for next year's convening, tentatively to be held in Denver, Colorado.
| 2018_NASS_Conference_Pittsburg.pdf | [ ] | 0 kB |
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In August 2017 the North American Sundial Society held its annual conference in St. Louis Missouri with a series of well attended talks on the mathematics of sundials, software tools to design sundials, and even videos on YouTube that are about sundials. NASS participants visited local astronomical sites of interest, including the War Memorial Dial in Forest Park. Don Snyder worked with Perry County and Perryville, a town on the eclipse path, to creat a new sundial for the courthouse gardens. Local craftspeople created the dial following Don's design. It, as other significant dials, is in the NASS Sundial Registry available on the web. At the Missouri Botanical Garden attendees saw the Schmoyer Sundial with its analemma shaped gnomon to tell civil time. It was made by Bill Gottesman and donated to the Garden by Don Synder and Bill. Also at the Botanical Garden is the Ottoman dial designed by Roger Bailey, following the design of the horizontal dial at Topkapi Palace in Istanbul. A presentation from Bill Iseminger on the Cahokia Woodhenge discussed the astronomical alignments such as solstice sunrise and sunset. Wood Henge was on the sundial tour itinerary, but due to heavy traffic, was excluded to reach the eclipse viewing site on time (the sun and moon had their schedules that were not subject to change).
The highlight was a visit to Jefferson Barracks to watch the total solar eclipse on August 21, 2019. All participants were given special safe viewing glasses to protect their eyes before and after totality. With cooperating weather, the eclipse was viewed with devices ranging from a pinhole camera obscura to telescopes with solar filters. A truly spectacular event. Bill Gottesman demonstratee his eclipse "sundial" that used the orientation of the eclipsed sun's cusp orientation as an indicator of time.
| 2017_NASS_Conference_St.Louis.pdf | [ ] | 0 kB |
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Portland Maine WCSH Channel 6 presents local and national news and the usual sports, weather and traffic. But on a recent 207 broadcast, they reported an invasion ... an invasion of sundialists coming to Portland, Maine for their annual conference and their search for a dial made over a century ago by Albert Crehore that might still be somewhere in Portland.
Members of the North American Sundial Society (NASS) take the art and science of sundials very seriously. Watch the video and consider joining NASS for even more sundial adventures. Visit Portland Channel 6 News:
| 2016_NASS_Conference_Portland.pdf | [ ] | 0 kB |
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The 2015 NASS Sundial Conference was held in Victoria, B.C. Roger Bailey organized the conference and provided a sundial tour in Victoria, stopping at the BC Legislature Rose Garden dial, the St. Ann's Academy dial, Christ Church Cathedral vertical dial, the BC Government House totem sundial, and more, including a visit out to the Dominion Astrophysical Observatory to see the 1.8 meter telescope.
Steve Luecking discussed spherical and elliptical gnomons where tangent points are dropped to a circle circumscribing the ellipse and hour lines are then drawn as tangents from the points on the circle. Steve used this technique to design a sundial using an elliptical gnomon with symbolic native art for Victoria. (Illustration at right)
Len Berggren described the design and building of a sundial that can show both solar and mean time, done with a $1000 grant from NASS. Presentations included John Schilke discussing the Heliotrope and Heliograph. Barry Duell outlined the history of a sundial at Willamette University donated by the Class of 1916. The dial was dedicated to Prof. Matthews and engraved with his motto of "Sagacity, Audacity, Holiness, Chairty."
Prof. Woody Sullivan described 3 new dials. The first two, an Oculus table and a Solar Hour Benches are at the San Francisco Exploratorium. The third dial at the Very Large Array Radio Telescope in New Mexico is the world's first and only sundial made from one of the original radio telescopes. It was constructed in memory of Prof. Ron Bracewell of Stanford Univ. a pioneer in radio astronomy.
Jackie Jones, Doug Bateman, Sasch Stephens, Fred Sawyer, and Mark Montgomery presented a wide range of topics from reflecting dials, elliptical dials and moon dials, to ancient Egyptian shadow clocks. Bob Kellogg, unable to attend, sent along a video on a new digital gnomon sundial, while Frank King and Steve Luecking discussed optical geometries and illusions. (Read more in the attached dowloadable PDF)
This year's Sawyer Dialing Prize was awarded to Ing. Gianni Ferrari "for his long career educating the dialing community about the nearly forgotten heritage of ancient Islamic gnomonics and the wide variety of modern analytically developed sundial." (Read more about the Sawyer Dialing Prize)
| 2015_NASS_Conference_Victoria.pdf | [ ] | 0 kB |
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 Founding Fathers - Washington Dial at Mt. Vernon, VA
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In August, 2014, the North American Sundial Society had a terrific conference in Indianapolis, Indiana, discussing sundial topics from the sundials of Our Founding Fathers where Fred Sawyer talked about the sundials and stories of George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas Jefferson.
 Greek Dial from Ai Khanum
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Another highlight was Jack Aubert's talk on the mysteries of an ancient Greek sundial found at Ai Khanum in the northern of Afghanistan and computing the hour lines. Who built this dial more than 2000 years ago and what kind of mathematics did they use?
Peggy Gunnerson described the evolution of a modern sundial parallelpipeds sculpture, creating an artistic and unusal east-west sundial. And Stephen Lueking presented a series of modern sundial designs for DePaul University. These were just some of the presentations. Subscribe to the digital edition of The Compendium from NASS and receive them all. The annual Sawyer Dialing Prize went to Robert Kellogg for NASS outreach and the invention of a digital sundial. Read more about the presentations and the tour of Indianapolis by downloading the attachment below.
 Peggy Gunnerson Parallelpiped Dial
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 Stephen Luecking - Dial Design for DePaul University
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Hosting 46 people, the conference was coordinated by George and Betsy Wilson and Mark an Phyllis Montgomery. During the Friday Sundial tour NASS was welcomed by Eagle Elementary School, the senior high ability class and their teachers. All gathered in the school's courtyard to show a large horizontal sundial, dedicated as a memorial to a former teacher, Linda Eads.
| 2014_NASS_Conference_Indianapolis.pdf | [ ] | 0 kB |