After the invention and the diffusion of the first bell tower clocks (1300-1400) the equal hours began to be used in Europe as a substitute for the unequal hours , used since the antiquity (for more than 1700 years!). While previously the beginning of the day was fixed at dawn or at sunset (Islam), with the new hours the beginning of the day, that is the moment from which to count the hours (hour 0) , was fixed in different ways in the different countries, in the instant of a peculiar observable astronomical phenomenon (at dawn, noon, sunset or midnight). In Italy my ancestors chose the instant of the sunset ( that is more easily observable of dawn and also of noon). The regulators of the clocks ( temperatori -as Frank King :-) ) could easily set their tools observing the disappearance of the solar disk. For this reason the Italian hours (in Latin Italic) begun to be counted from sunset (hour 24). In Italy we have a saying that tells “portare il cappello sulle 23” (to wear the hat on the 23) to point out that a person wear the hat with the brim folded down to protect his eyes from the Sun, as it is necessary to do before sunset (23h = 1hour before sunset) The Italian hour ware abandoned in the first half of the XIX century.
Today it’s enough a look to our wristwatch to know the time, while almost nobody knows when the Sun sets (also because with the standard time the calculation is not easy). For this reason some persons built sundials with the hours missing to sunset. I always recommend them, also because as soon as a person looks at a common sundial, he also looks immediately at his wristwatch and, shaking his head, often makes bitter considerations on the planner that has not succeeded in making an exact sundial! The sundials with hours to sunset are obviously sundials with Italian hours - that only dialists know :-) - in which we have written the values of the complements from 24 . Best wishes Gianni Ferrari P.S. - One of the first clocks with equal times is that painted by Paolo Uccello (Duomo Santa Maria del Fiore- Florence) : see in http: //www.wga.hu/frames-e.html?/html/u/uccello/3florenc/3clock.html >----Messaggio originale---- >Da: [EMAIL PROTECTED] >Data: 7- mag-2007 12.36 >A: "sundial List"<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> >Ogg: Italian hours > >Italian hours are counted from sunset. One has to take its complement >from 24 to know the time left until suntime. >Why sundials with Italian hours do'nt indicate directly the result of >this calculation? Is there a practical or historical reason? > >Willy LEENDERS >Hasselt in Flanders (Belgium) > > >--------------------------------------------------- >https://lists.uni- koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial > > --------------------------------------------------- https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial
