Sundials Eighteenth century English sundials though highly attractive were far more than garden ornaments.  Before the advent of the railways and the standardisation of time each town, village and estate worked to local time regulated by the sun and divined by the shadow it cast.  The simplest of these might be a noon mark scratched into the fabric of the house through to complicated dials calibrated with a deep understanding of  astronomy.  The great clockmakers of their day, who manufactured timepieces the envy of the world, produced equations of time subsidary dials and tables enabling the mechanical dial to be reconciled with the solar.  Even the grandest clocks had to be set by the sun.  Most of the information needed to calculate an accurate sundial is no longer general knowledge but a sundial can reaquaint one some profound truths.  The dials gnomon which casts the shadow (from the Greekk, one who knows) is set on the locations meridian and thus points the observer in the direction of true north and its angle is the same as the location latitude, .  Latitude and longitude the determination of which taxed great minds for centuries are the prerequisites for calibrating a sundial.  Although now easily found via a post code they must be known before a dial can be started.
	Neill Robinson Blaxill F.B.H.I. Horologist - Website: www.antiques-clocks.co.uk 21 St Johns Hill, Sevenoaks, Kent, TN13 3NX, Tel: 01732 454179, Email: info@hyperiondials.co.uk Sundials  -  Enquiries  -  Home