At the 2014 NASS Conference in Indianapolis, Indiana, Fred Sawyer announced this year’s Sawyer Dialing Award is given to Robert Kellogg, “who, through his constant outreach, his unflagging support of NASS, and his technical ingenuity, as evidenced by his invention of the digital sundial, has helped to usher dialing into the modern age.”

Bob designed and patented a digital sundial based on sunbeam projection, first considered when he was at the US Naval Postgraduate School.  But it took more than a decade for those ideas to gel into a firm technical form and a US Patent.

Bob continues to write “Sundials for Starters”, a regular column for NASS's Compendium. Over the last several years he has organized the joint NASS-Analemma Society outreach at the US Science and Engineering Festival and has brought sundialing to Montgomery County Schools in Maryland for the last 20 years.

Fred Sawyer presented Bob with an award certificate, the traditional cash prize of $200 and a custom made Spectra Sundial by Jim Tallman of Artisan Industrials. André Bouchard received the 2013 Sawyer Dialing prize at the Boston NASS Conference “In recognition of two decades of promoting, preserving, extending and exemplifying the pairimoine of Québecois of dialing and gnomonics.” During the first 15 years of the CCSQ (la Commission des Cadrans solaires du Québec) André made numerous presentations on gnomonics, adopting objective and descriptive ways in order to highlight the specific elements of particular dials and dialist styles. Now as editor of The Gnomonist / Le Gnomoniste, André is rediscovering the fundamentals of philosophy through sundials, showing that they merge both in time, place, casting symbolic meaning and beauty within their surrounding. André illustrated this by discussing the design of the 2008 sundial on the shore of the St. Laurence River at Point aux Outardes Park near Baie-Comeau, where the polar gnomon and its supports simulate bull rushes, augmented by a flight of geese. Fred Sawyer presented André with an award certificate, the traditional cash prize of$200 and a custom made Spectra Sundial by Jim Tallman of Artisan Industrials.

The 2012 Sawyer Dialing Prize was awarded to Frank King at the annual NASS Conference in Asheville, North Carolina.

The award is given “In recognition of his innovative mathematical and astronomical solutions to problems encountered in the modern design of notable sundials.”  Dr. King is Council Chairman of the British Sundial Society, Senior Lecturer of the Computer Laboratory at Cambridge University, and a Fellow of Churchill College where he is Chairman of the Churchill Archives Committee and Praelector.  At Cambridge he also holds the responsibility of the University Bellringer, “one of the University’s most ancient and unusual posts” with the job of keeping the University Clock telling correct time.

He has designed many sundials including the vertical dial with Italian and Babylonian hours for Selwyn College, Cambridge (a new dial for Old Court), the Pembroke College vertical sundial, the noon mark wall analemma at 10 Paternoster Square in London, the unusual near-horizontal gnomon sundial as a memorial dial for Margaret Stanier, the analemmatic dial for Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee (2002) and the circular analemmatic dial for the MetroTransit Authority (Metropolitana) of Naples.

Frank was presented with a cash prize of $200 and a custom made Spectra Sundial by Jim Tallman of Artisan Industrials. This year's Sawyer Dialing Prize awarded at the 2011 NASS Conference in Seattle Washington was given to Helmut Sonderegger, "In recognition of his ongoing development and support of the dialing software Sonne, and his many years of leadership in his national society." His acceptance talk was on one of the first Copernican followers, Rheticus. For many years Helmut Sonderegger has been active in the German Sundial Association and was chairman of a team of dialist to produce the 3rd Editiion of the Austrian Sundial Catalogue. His most famous free sundial software, „Sonne“ calculates about 20 different sundial types and his program „Alemma“ is devoted to the calculation of analemmatic sundials. The software is available at his website, www.helson.at. He endeavors to help people who make sundials through his software and through articles in the NASS Compendium and the German Rundschreiben, and for local groups. Helmut was presented with a cash prize of$200 and a custom made Spectra Sundial by Jim Tallman of Artisan Industrials.

The 2010 Sawyer Dialing Prize goes to William L. Gottesman of Burlington, Vermont, "In recognition of his committment to innovation and high precision design in sundials which combine tradition with 21st century advances."  Bill is designer of the Renaissance Sundial, a spiral sundial that uses curved mirrors to show the time to within 30 seconds.  His dial is available at http://www.precisionsundials.com

Bill collaborated with Kate Pond to design the Equatorial Band Sundial, dedicated during the 2010 NASS conference at Champlain College with the title "Come Light, Visit Me."  On a smaller scale, but with no less precision, Bill worked with Fred Sawyer to realize the Sawyer Equant Sundial that will show both solar and clock time.  To "advertise" the 2010 NASS conference, Bill even designed the back end of his car as a sundial, using the radio antenna as a gnomon.

As in past years, Bill was presented with \$200 to fund a sundial project of his choice and a custom made Spectra Sundial by Jim Tallman of Artisan Industrials:

At the 2009 NASS Conference in Portland OR, Fred Sawyer announced that the Sawyer Dialing Prize would go to John Davis of the British Sundial Society, “in recognition of the superb quality of the dials he has created, and in appreciation of his historical research to enhance our knowledge of the dialists who preceded us and the craft they left us.”

The award money was used by John to help place one of his magnificent double horizontal sundials on the campus of Purdue North Central University in Indiana. John was able to show off the Spectra Sundial by Jim Tallman of Artisan Industrials. Fred Sawyer reviewed the portfolio of sundials and restorations by John, showing a replica of a 17 th century double-horizontal dial, several small engraved horizontals, a beautiful 14” circular dial and several dials based on the “Grocers’ Pattern” of the 18 th century.

John created a dial plate for the Isaac Newton sculptured dials at Leicester University and UCLA. In the bronze casting it appears that Newton’s prism casts a beam of light onto an equatorial dial. John has also created everything from vertical dials to pocket dials, including replicas of Humfrey Cole’s 1569 designs. John has also been very active in the restoration of many dials as well. After the award announcement, Fred gave John Davis’ presentation on John Seller, a sundial maker and probable forger who was located in London and worked during the 17 th century.

At the 2008 NASS Conference in St. Louis MO, Fred Sawyer presented the 2008 Sawyer Dialing Prize to Kate Pond “for the success of her World Sculpture Project.  This project has brought dialing, an appreciation of light and shadow and new connections between traditional art and science to children and adults in countries and cultures around the world.”  The prize consisted of a certificate, a cash award, and a specially commissioned trophy Spectra Sundial by Jim Tallman.

Kate Pond presented a summary of her award winning world project.  “My sculpture invites participation: with people, and with the sun, shadows and alignments at different seasons of the year.  The position of the sun, moon, and stars create a structure for me, like a painter might use a rectangle as a frame of reference.”  The first sculpture of her project “ZigZag”, is a simple elegant pipe structure that tracks the time from 10 am to 2 pm on the equinox at latitude 45 degrees, the border between Canada and the US at the dial’s location, Stanstead Quebec.  The next sculpture was SOLEKKO at the Norwegian Museum of Science and Technology, Oslo, Norway.  Here the sculpture is a triangular cone that casts no shadow at noon on the equinox.  All the projects involved children actively playing and learning and included time capsules with art and their messages for the future. Other sculptures were created in Japan, Hawaii, and New Zealand.  This last sculpture “Telling Stones” used stone alignments for the rising and setting of summer and winter solstices, equinox, and the rising of the Pleiades in June (the Matariki marking the Maori new year) and the rising of Antares (the Maori, Rehua), at the beginning of summer in December.  You can find more of Kate Pond’s works at http://www.vermontsculpture.com/

At the 2007 NASS Conference in McLean VA, Fred Sawyer presented the Sawyer Dialing Prize to Mac Oglesby, citing Mac’s unusual dials and his willingness to help others make dials, passing his educational efforts among several generations of people, and his promotion of community interest in sundials.  Once again this year the prize included a custom Spectra Sundial designed and produced by Jim Tallman of Artisan Industrials.  In accepting the prize, Mac thanked many people who had helped him:  Bill Maddux, who introduced him to dials, Fred Sawyer, who brought him into NASS, Bob Terwilliger about Compendium articles, Fer J. de Vries, who helped him through email correspondence, Tony Moss for ideas, and David Roth, with slides of Bill Maddux and Mac and their work.  Mac then distributed cylinder azimuth dials he had made as a gift for each conference participant – specific to his/her own location.

At the 2006 NASS Conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, Fred Sawyer announced that the Sawyer Dialing Prize for 2006 is given to Hendrik Hollander, “for his innovative design of a mean-time planar sundial with oblique conical gnomon and modified hour lines and day curves – resulting in a sundial adapted to modern timekeeping while retaining the aesthetic appeal of the familiar dial face.” Fer J. de Vries was able to present the dial to Hendrik in The Netherlands.

One of Hendrik’s conical gnomon dials is on the cover of the September 2006 [Vol. 13, No. 3] issue of The Compendium.  Inside that issue Hendrik explains in detail how the cone dial and a number of other bi-gnomon sundials work.   In response to the Sawyer Dialing Prize Hendrik sent a letter of thanks to the NASS conference.