To All,
I just had a great weekend of being able to read the back issues of the
Compendium. The Compendium is the journal of the North American Sundial
Society.
Contact treasurer Harold Brandmaier at [EMAIL PROTECTED] or Fredrick W. Sawyer
at [EMAIL PROTECTED] for membership application and information. Last weekend
I
read the book "Longitude" after reading a book review in the journal. It is an
excellent book on a topic that threads together science, art, economics and
politics.
I am a science teacher at Stagg High School, located southwest of
Chicago. Each
year I tell a few seniors to leave a sundial gift to the school. Until now I
really did
not have any unique designs in mind.
"A Transparent Window Dial" by Thibaud Taudin-Chabot, vol-1-3 of the
Compendium
is an inspiration. I had never considered this design. It is idea for a
location with
a large window area. We have such an area in walkways between each of our
three
buildings. Is there any church with this design in stained glass?
I can't say enough good about the contributions of Fred Sawyer. Last
summer I
worked several weeks on "Reducing a plane to the horizontal" (Vol 1-4) I ended
up
making my changes based on Waugh's chapter on vertical declining dials. (Waugh
finds a
sub-style distance, style height, difference in logitude, and new angle for
gnomon.) I
had considered a spherical triangle solution, but I did not get the math clear
in my
head until I read Fred Sawyer's article on spherical triangles (Vol1-3).
NASS has distributed the shareware program "Graphica" to draw and print
designs
and make analysis. I would like to see any sundial plot files written for
Graphica as I
am not having much luck getting what I want with parametric equations. Please
post any
you may have. I have only worked with Graphica a few hours. I do like the
many print
options.
What dial information produces straight lines on a flat plane? (other
than hour
lines of course.) Fred Sawyer gives "Universal Horizontal Dialfaces"
(Compendium Vol
2-3) which has a face of all straight lines! Amazing. Does anyone have any
other ideas
on this?
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Warren Thom [EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Hompage--I am working on it.
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