Greetings, fellow dialists,
Following the pictures of the fine dial of Frank King in Selwyn College, 
Cambridge (congratulations) I began to wonder how it was laid out. Most 
of the commonly consulted books on dial construction (in English), 
Waugh, Mayall & Mayall, Cousins, etc. do no more than glance at Italian 
and Babylonian hours. Only Rohr has some account. His practical method 
appears to be to find the time and nodus point of sunrise and sunset at 
the solstices, count the hours back from them and join the winter and 
summer nodus points for each hour. This seems a pretty journeyman’s 
procedure (nothing wrong with that) but I wonder if there is some more 
sophisticated method.

Also, the assumption seems to be made that sunrise and sunset occurs 
when the altitude of the sun’s centre is zero. This is far from sunset 
in any practical sense. Any comments, please?
Frank 55N 1W


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