Greetings, fellow dialists, A kind BSS member has given me a sundial. It is made of cardboard and is about 15 cm high. He writes: I am enclosing a dial sun-compass which may be new to you. The principle was described in an article by Fred Sawyer (Bulletin, British Sundial Society, 91, 3). The device should be assembled, using the card wedges to hold the two semicircles at 55 deg. (my latitude) with June-July at the upper edge. The bottom of the V should coincide with the date. Each arm casts a shadow to tell solar time on the inner and outer scales. When the dial is placed on a horizontal surface so that the two times are the same the plane of the vertical card coincides with the meridian. Invented in 1664 according to Sawyer.
I assembled it and it works! The dial plate is at 55 deg. to the horizontal, two gnomon edges cut out of a single card are at right angles to each other and each is at 45 deg. to the dial plate. The whole thing has the feel of a tilted analemmatic dial with two oblique gnomons. The dial plate and upper gnomon are said to equate to Gordon Taylor's large Royal Observatory dial now in Cambridge. I only sort of see how it works despite Fred Sawyer's benign instruction. Can anyone provide a few simple words to help me further? Thanks in advance, Frank. -- Frank Evans
