One interesting aspect of the historical sundials in Europe is the variety of timelines they display. Old dials often show not only regular equal hours based on noon and midnight but Italian hours, starting at sunset, Babylonian hours starting at sunrise, prayer times, Canonical or Moslem, and 12 unequal hours. These dials are fascinating in their displays of time concepts: hours in the day and days in the year.
In North America there are few such dials. The only one I know of off hand is Mac Oglesby's "time remaining to sunset" dial at Moore's Airfield. This uses reverse Italian hours to show the time available for pilots using Visual Flying Rules. See NASS Compendium 12-1. The focus of our newer culture is clock time. We strive mightily to make sundials tell clock time. Get over it! The clocks are wrong. Solar time is reality. Have I missed something? Are there good examples of other timelines on dials in North America? Roger Bailey Walking Shadow Designs N 48.6 W 123.4 --------------------------------------------------- https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial
