Fascinating. Weird and wonderful! I hope that the architects/designers have
got some good gnomonic science/sense behind their designs. I have three
experiences of designers/architects and sundials.
1. The large vertical dial (2 m square) on top of a one-storey building
needed to be observed through a skylight. the gnomon was about 5 cm thick.
All the hour liones radiated from a point. i.e. no allowance made for gnomon
thickbess. Not to mention that the hour-lines were all drawns fro a different
latitude than for the place of use.
2. A whole array of very large sundials spread across the city of Bristol had
vertical gnomons and all hour lines at 15 deg.! Never built - perhaps it was
as well.
3. A big project on-going in the middle-east. Very big plaza dial with 100 ft
high gnomon had a powerful laser beam at the top of the gnomon mast which was
shinbe dwonwards on to conventional 24-hour hour-marks so that the time could
be read at night. Pity the eyes of the unfortunate users who who look up to
see where the bright (laser) light was coming from!
Ah well........What are we 'experts' here for?
David Brown
51.05N 2.74W
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