Thank you to everyone who has replied to my question about the labeling
of noon.
Summary of responses received:
Due to space constraints, a label of XII is sometimes replaced by
something narrower. I'll hazard a guess that the use of Roman I, in the
example I saw at Knox United Church, Vancouver, is pretty unusual. Using
it to mark noon on a solar hours dial seems to be a potential source of
confusion (well, it confused me).
I like the idea of a Cross Pattee as mentioned by Patrick Power, or the
N mentioned by Don Snyder. I think I'll use one or the other of these
symbols for any dials I make in the future, although the latter wouldn't
work for all languages.
Roger Bailey mentioned that digit zero is often used for the same
purpose. That is another option previously unnoticed by me but, in a
remarkable coincidence, it was in a photo sent to me earlier that day by
Sasch Stephens, and then the next day I encountered an identical dial in
Kelowna BC.
According to Wikipedia, these dials' depiction of a winged hourglass
represents "tempus fugit" ("time flies"). There seem to be plenty of
other dials, at least in North America, that use the winged hourglass,
and also 0 for noon for that matter. See, for example, the dials
illustrating Don Synder's paper about the dial at Jefferson Barracks
near St. Louis MO.
Photo of Kelowna dial: https://tinyurl.com/y7msj68h
Note about winged hourglass: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hourglass
Don Snyder's paper about Jefferson Barracks:
http://dls-website.com/documents/JeffersonBarracksSundial.pdf
Cheers,
Steve
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