Greetings fellow dialists
In his recent article on the equation of time in BSS Bulletin 17 (iii),
Chris Daniel writes that the earliest appearance of the analemma in a UK
publication is perhaps the illustration in the second edition of Mrs.
Gatty's sundial book, dated 1889. Here the figure and construction
details are the work of Wigham Richardson, a Tyneside shipbuilder. In
his diagram the familiar "figure of eight" is superimposed on the noon
line. Of necessity such a construction demands a nodus on the gnomon and
we may describe the arrangement as a graphic indicator of the equation
of time through the year.
Earlier, in 1881 Wigham Richardson made a sundial which he placed at the
entrance to his shipyard. This dial bore a curve stretched over a
straight line, which was also clearly an expression of the equation of
time. Unfortunately neither the old photograph of the dial in situ nor
the more recently repainted dial shows any indication of the months to
which the parts of the curve are related. But they must originally have
been present.
Such a snake-like curve is not an indicator of the equation of time but
a graphic illustration of its changes through the year.
My question is: Was this, like Richardson's appendix in Mrs. Gatty's
book, a first appearance of an equation of time line? Can anyone supply
earlier earlier examples of such a line on dials either in the UK or
elsewhere?
Frank 55N 1W
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