August, 1908 



AMERICAN HOMES AND GARDENS 



327 



Sun-Dials 



Curious Forms of a 

 Useful Instrument 



By Randolph I. Geare 



A Pocket Sun-dial with Compass in Leather Case 



A Pocket Sun-dial with Compass 



OT many years before the middle of the 

 nineteenth century the New England vil- 

 lagers commonly told the time of day by 

 means of a "noon-mark," perhaps a groove 

 in the floor just inside the house door and 

 at an angle with the threshold, or else a 

 series of rude notches cut in the window 

 casement. A yet earlier device was a pole stuck in the soil, 

 the shadow of which reached certain marks on the ground as 

 the day passed by — a plan not unlike that adopted by the 

 Montagnais Indians of Canada, who set up a staff in the snow 

 and approximated the time of day by noting the angle be- 

 tween shadows from time to time. A later method among 

 New Englanders was to incline the pole so as to point to the 

 north star and run parallel with the earth's axis. 



All of this antedated the construction of the complete dial, 



shuts down flat, and figured for latitudes 43°, 46°, 49°, and 

 52°, while the latitudes of twenty-four important cities are 

 engraved on the back. A very interesting dial in this collec- 

 tion is so devised that it can be set for any one of one hundred 

 and fifty-eight different places, including points as far dis- 

 tant from each other as Berlin, London, Copenhagen, Con- 

 stantinople, Palermo, Stockholm, etc. Another dial in the 

 same collection — apparently made in Italy, and finely con- 

 structed of brass — not only indicates the time in many differ- 

 ent latitudes, but is also used for making observations of the 

 planets. It has a folding gnomon and compass, and is cov- 

 ered inside with very elaborate astronomical tables bearing 

 inscriptions in Latin. 



A student of Biblical archaeology states that the invention 

 of the pole and gnomon combined, producing an instrument 

 perfect in itself for all observations, was probably connected 



A Brass Sun-dial with Plumbob for Leveling 



A Folding Pocket.slvory Sun-dial 



marked with regard to the special locality for which it was with the rectification of the Babylonian calendar in B. C. 747 

 made, or by special contrivance, adaptable to several local- —nineteen years before the accession of Ahaz. A flight of 

 ities lhere is a combined pocket-dial and compass of this steps caught the shadow in the open air, or more probably 

 kind ,n the collections of the National Museum at Washing- within a closed chamber, into which a ray of light was ad- 

 ton, made by Menant, of Pans, with a hinged gnomon that mitted from above, and which passed from winter to summer 



