Dedham  

 Sundial: 1097
State/Province:  Massachusetts Country:  USA
Dial Type:  Digital Dial Condition:  Poor
  Latitude and Longitude: 42° 15.193' N   71° 11.623' W
Location:
  • At Endicott House,MIT Conference Center: 80 Have Street, Dedham, MA 02026, Dial is located in the garden about 250 ft (76m) south of the Endicott Conference Center.
 
Description:
  • This is one of John Garret Thew's mass produced "digital sundials" patented on April 5, 1960. The dial casts a numeral onto the dial's central plate that accommodates beams of sunlight and shadow from winter to summer solstice. The numerals (corrected for the hour angle distortion) slowly move across the dial's plate and the hour is read at the meridian line. Perhaps a good selection for advanced technology at MIT to grace their garden, but it has been neglected in recent years. However, Thew was not the first to come up with this digital sundial. In June 1758 Monsieur De Lalande of the Royal Academy of Sciences in a letter to the editors of the Journal des Scavans described a dial by J.L. Bizot (1702-1781) in which, on an internal wall, an angel's hand is raised to point upward at numerals of light cast "by a half-ring of iron...which has small openings every 15 degrees in the form of a numeral..."
 
General Information:
  • Owner: Massachusetts Inst. Technology
  • Designer: John Garret Thew
  • Builder: John Garret Thew
  • Construction Date: Mid 1960 - Mid 1970
 
References:
  • "On a new form of Sundial (1758), NASS Compendium, pp19-20, Vol. 1, Nr. 2, May 1994.

Last Revised: 2023-07-02 20:12