PocketSundial.com
Title
Universal Pocket Sundial - Authentic reproduction of an antique portable sundial.
Description
he knowledge and use of sundials can be traced back several thousand years. It is not known who were the first people to use the sun to measure time but it may be that around 5,000 years ago the Babylonians perfected the relationship of the sun to the hour of the day.
Early sundials, such as the Egyptian obelisk, were designed and adjusted for a specific location. It was the invention of the "dual ring sundial" in the sixteenth century that made it possible to use the same instrument at any geographic location. Latitude was set on the outer ring, while the current month could be set on a sliding bar across a horizontal bridge. A true reading of local time was achieved by positioning the sundial so that a sunspot passed through a pin hole on the bridge, hitting an inner ring, which marked the hours of the day (as seen on the left). Sundials became the standard measuring device for travelers, navigators, seafarers and ordinary folk alike, providing the most accurate portable timepiece available in that era.
Today this fully functional timepiece makes a valuable contribution to understanding the earth's rotation and it's annual voyage around the sun, in addition to serving as a learning tool for the history of time before the advent of spring driven clocks and electricity.
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