Dear Frank Sorry, but I'm pretty sure you can't use that trick because Italian and Babylonian time are "local" in a way that modern hours are not. The modern time at a location ninety degrees away is always a fixed amount before or after the time you're interested in. For instance, for a wall in England facing west of south, you could find a spot ninety degrees away in the South Atlantic where, say, the modern time is always 2 hours earlier than in England.
But, except at the equinoxes, that location's sunrise and sunset will not be 2 hours after yours. So, a horizontal dial showing correct Italian and Babylonian hours for that location will not show the Italian and Babylonian hours in England, even if you adjust the numbers by 2 hours. This is because the Italian and Babylonian hours relate to the local horizontal plane. So, whereas a sundial reading modern hours can be moved to a new location and positioned so as still to work correctly, perhaps by using a wedge to cant it, this is not true of an Italian/Babylonian sundial. Such a dial can be used only at one latitude. Chris Lusby Taylor 51.4N 1.3W ----- Original Message ----- From: "Frank Evans" <[email protected]> To: "Sundial" <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, March 31, 2010 2:01 PM Subject: re how italian dials > Greetings, fellow dialists, > I'm starting to think that for a vertical dial in Italian hours it would > be simplest to use the old dialist's trick of laying it out as a > horizontal dial at ninety degrees away. > Frank > > --------------------------------------------------- > https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial > --------------------------------------------------- https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial
