Fellow Shadow Watchers,
For smaller sundials I prepare my own film
artwork but larger items are beyond my modest photographic darkroom.
While visiting my local graphics agency to pick up the film for my latest
larger dial I was leafing through one of their recent book printings and
came across a reference which led me to Ferdinand Verbiest the Belgian
Jesuit priest and astronomer who was responsible for the ancient
Observatory in Beijing which I enquired about some months ago.
He seems to have been a bit of a Leonardo da Vinci in his day and it is
claimed, among other things, that his proposed steam engine for
propelling ships pre-dates Thomas Newcomen and others in the field.
Look at
http://homepages.primex.co.uk/~sproston/sstar9c.htm
and other pages devoted to him which are well worth a Google search.
Tony Moss
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