Greetings fellow dialists, Some while ago I quoted from the 1852 General Order for the regulation of Scottish lighthouse clocks by means of the lighthouse sundial, a required weekly procedure almost military in its precision.
I have now come across its gentler ecclesiastical equivalent in an 1890 footnote. The text reads: (footnote) We must not forget the importance of sundials in the past. Before the days of telegraphy, and when few places possessed an observatory with a transit instrument, sun-dials of one kind or other were the only means by which clocks were regulated. Almost every town hall or church which had a clock had also a sun-dial for without the latter the former was almost useless. I possess a beautifully engraved: (quote) Table. For easily Regulating Clocks and Watches, fitted to the NEW STYLE & the present Position of the SUN'S Apogee. Any Day in the Year when it is exactly 12 by a Meridian Line, or a true Sun-Dial the Clock ought to agree with this TABLE otherwise must be Altered to it. (end of quote) Such a table generally hung in the parish vestry side by side with the Almanack (end of footnote). (from "Vestiges of Old Newcastle and Gateshead" by J.R.Boyle and W.H.Knowles, Newcastle upon Tyne and London, 1890.) What, I wonder, was meant by the NEW STYLE and present position of the SUN'S Apogee. The "Table" clearly predates Railway Time i.e. pre-1847 or thereabouts. Frank 55N 1W -- Frank Evans -
