Dear Willy, You say...
> The Armenian sundials are more a building > ornament than an instrument to measure the > time. These are variants of the standard European sundials used for indicating 'unequal hours', at least approximately, in medieval times. Several thousand survive in England alone. They divide the daylight period from sunrise to sunset into 12 parts. Unfortunately, these parts are not equal in time and their relationship varies with the time of year. If the dial is vertical, due south-facing, and on the equator (and the gnomon is horizontal and perpendicular to the dial plate) then such a dial would work perfectly. In Armenia, at 40N, they don't perform so well but they they still divide the period sunrise to sunset into 12 parts. It is just that these divisions are not in the correct places and are not of equal length. The examples in the photographs seem very nicely made. Frank Frank King Cambridge, U.K. --------------------------------------------------- https://lists.uni-koeln.de/mailman/listinfo/sundial
