The prior note was sent with a misleading title by error-it was not a solicitation to buy a dial. The Web Address was also misprinted and is corrected below.
Dear Sundial-list members, Richard Schmoyer's daughter, Laurel Browning, sent me a photo of a (unfinished?) dial her dad was working on before he died. She has no information about it. It can be seen at www.precisionsundials.com/sundial_list.htm. Any thoughts on what he was building? <A HREF="http://www.precisionsundials.com/sundial_list.htm";>Schmoyer Dial</A> Here is my take on it: It is an equatorial type of dial, with the numbers running counterclockwise, so it is either for mounting on a wall as a vertical dial, or a dial for the southern hemisphere. The dial face is cone shaped. I think this is so (if mounted high on a wall) people would be able to look up at it, and still read it easily, despite it's equatorial design. The direction of the number's orientation would support this. Unlike his SunQuest, this dial seems designed to read local solar time, rather than civil time. Even so, each 5 minute interval is marked-I'm not sure why local solar time would invite such precision. There seems to be a noon gap in the minute scale commensurate with the gnomon's width. -Bill Gottesman -
