If the indentation were a shallow rectangular hollow instead of a segment
of a sphere, it would of course amount to several adjoined flat dials--a
horizontal-dial surrounded by vertical-dials.

Michael Ossipoff
16 Tu
Aries 19th
Aprilis 7th

On Tue, Apr 7, 2020 at 7:07 AM Peter Mayer <[email protected]> wrote:

> Hi,
>   Dan-George Uza's recent post reminded me of a question I have. I was
> looking at Mark Lennox-Boyd's lovely *Sundials* the other day, especially
> photos of some of the beautiful Renaissance ivory diptychs, and realised
> that I didn't understand the principles behind the small scaphes on many
> dials. (Here's a Wikicommons photo of a Leonhard Miller dial).
> The Greek and Roman scaphes, like the one in Dan-George's photo, were
> hollow sections of either spheres or cones, with a gnomon at their centre.
> Their mode of operation seems quite straight-forward.
> But the scaphes in diptyches weren't like that. They appear to be tiny
> slices of much larger spheres. And the gnomons are, of course, far from the
> centre. The 'furniture' on several of them seems similar to stereographic
> projections. But, since instrument-makers then were well able to make
> astrolabes with stereographs, perhaps not.
> So: can someone point me to an article which discusses these small
> scaphes? Or, in the meantime, help me understand how and why they were
> used? Why don't we make them any more? Or: are there any contemporary
> examples, using, say, bowls, or bird-baths or skateboard parks?
> best wishes,
>
> Peter
>
> -----------
> Peter Mayer
> Department of Politics & International Relations (POLIR)
> School of Social Scienceshttp://www.arts.adelaide.edu.au/polis/
> The University of Adelaide, AUSTRALIA 5005
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