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Third attempt at sending this message - anyone know what's
wrong?
J
Hi Patrick et al,
Interesting that we should get opposite results from our
surveys of dial pictures! Possible reasons for this are that all the
double-horizontal dials I looked at were C17/18, so the preferred orientation
may have changed from inward to outward over the years. Another possible
reason is that the DH dials tend to be large, so they are less susceptible to
"serif crowding" when tops of the letters are on the inside. On the other
hand, with very large dials the tendancy of the viewer is to walk around the
outside to read them, rather than to take a bird's-eye view from the
south.
Perhaps there's a need for another line on the BSS Report
Form?
Best regards,
John
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This
is an interesting topic for me because as Registrar of BSS I have to
enter
the various distinguishing features of dials that have been found by
our
Members. I have recently taken to remarking on the arrangements of
the
numerals where the appearance looks different from the norm.
Sadly with
over 4000 dials of all types I cannot easily put in comments for
all dials!
Internally viewable numerals (and other 'different'
arrangements!) are a
feature that is more commonly found with vertical
dials where I would guess
the different arrangements occur more or less
with equal regularity.
However I haven't done a check.
In horizontal
dials though there is most definitely a bias to arranging
Roman numerals to
be read from the outside - a rather quick statistical
estimate made by me
just now by looking through 174 horizontal dial photos
in the BSS Register
(an estimate which is however flawed by the fact that
some photos did not
permit an observation of the numeral arrangement!)
indicates that as few as
11% of dials have internally viewed numerals. Even
allowing (say) a factor
two - a likely overestimate in my view - for those
dials whose photos
do not permit an observation we can, I think, say that
only about a quarter
of horizontal dials are engraved with internally
viewed numerals.
It
is a topic that might bear further analysis since you see several old
dials
and dials by famous makers (like Melvin) with internally viewed
numerals as
well as new ones.
I agree with you that the internal arrangement
generally looks better - if
for no other reason than that it facilitiates
reading the dial from the
South looking North which, for me, is the way I
often find myself looking
first at a dial. However, maybe I am just
wierd!
Regards Patrick
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