Greetings fellow dialists, John Foad has written to say that Keith Scobie-Youngs of the Cumbria Clock Co, Dacre, Penrith, last restored the Hawkshead dial in 1997. He asked the restorer if there was any clue from its original state, for example whether any of the lettering had been uncertain. But Keith Scobie-Youngs assured him that, though in poor condition, there was no doubt about the previous inscription. He unfortunately had no information or theory on what the "PL Long" meant, nor indeed as to why the dial is canted to no apparently significant declination!
It has now been made clear to me by Fer de Vries, who has a good clear photograph, that the letters "PL" that I cited are in fact "PI". Moreover his picture reveals the missing declining values printed beside the locations values as "Decl. 30 deg 20 min." Here I take the liberty of passing on his message to me: In the mean time I found a larger picture of this dial and there is more text as you describe. The part of the text I mean is in the attached picture. A new value I read is: Decl 30 (degrees) 20 (minutes) Now we are able to calculate all the constants of the sundial. I get with ZW2000: Style height 30.19 Angle of substyle 160.1 or 29.9 Hourangle of substyle -35.75 All decimal degrees. I thought: bingo, hour angle of the substyle. But the value you mentioned gives 35.7277.. decimal. Still not all questions answered but perhaps this gives you another idea how to solve it." Well, this looks pretty close indeed and we may be nearing the answer. Can anyone consequently suggest a relationship between the letters "PI" and hour angle? Polar something? Moreover, actual longitude values having proved pretty unlikely (problematic observatories in Brazil, rural Russia, South Georgia, etc.) it is worth observing that actual longitude values are not common on nineteenth century dials anyway. Frank 55N 1W -- No virus found in this outgoing message. Checked by AVG Free Edition. Version: 7.5.463 / Virus Database: 269.6.1/776 - Release Date: 25/04/2007 12:19 --------------------------------------------------- https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial
