Sun-Dials: History and Classification

Higgins Kathleen , “The classification of sun-dials”, Annals of science, ix (1953), 342–58.

A summary report of the committee's activities was included as an appendix to Ward F. A. B. , A catalogue of European scientific instruments in the Department of Medieval and Later Antiquities of the British Museum (London, 1981), 149–50.

Houzeau J. C. Lancaster A. , Bibliographie générale de l'astronomie jusqu'en 1880, new edition with additional material by D. W. Dewhirst (London, 1964). Tardy , Bibliographie générale de la mesure du temps (Paris, 1957). Taylor E. G. R. , The mathematical practitioners of Tudor and Stuart England, 1485–1714 (Cambridge, 1954).

Gatty Charles T. , “The bibliography of dialling”, Notes & queries, 7th ser., viii (1889), 142–4 with addenda by Everard Home Colemen and Ed. Marshall in ibid., 243–4.

A first somewhat crude attempt to use the numbers of books on dialling as an index of interest in the subject will be found in Turner A. J. , “La gnomonique en France à l'époque de Jean Picard”, in Picolet Guy (ed.), Jean Picard et les débuts de l'astronomie de précision au XVIIe siècle: Actes du Colloque du tricentenaire (Paris, 1987), 344–60. A bibliography of works in the French language exclusively concerned with dialling and printed before 1800 is given by Turner A. J. , “La Gnomonique en langue française imprimés entre 1500 et 1800”, Bulletin d'ANCAHA, no. 50 (1987), 55–72.

Fale Thomas , Horologiographia. The Art of Dialling: Teaching an easie and perfect Way to Make all kinds of Dials upon any plain Plat howsoever placed… (London, 1593), Sig A3r.

de Floutrières Pierre , Traité d'horlogéographie ausquel est enseigné à decrire et construire toutes sortes d'horloges au soleil… (Paris, 1619 and four later editions), 5.

Fale , op. cit. (ref. 6), sigs A2r-v.

Oddi Mutio , De gli horologi solari trattato (Venice, 1638).

Richer [Claude] , La gnomonique universelle …, (Paris, 1701), 1.

de la Hire [Philippe] , La Gnomonique ou l'art de tracer des cadrans ou horloges solaires sur toutes sortes de surfaces … (Paris, 1682), 6.

All authors mentioned by Scultetus B. , Gnomonice de solariis sive doctrina practica tertiae partis Astronomiae. Von allerley Solarien das ist himmelischen Circuln und Uhren … (Danzig, 1632).

Typical of the state of the history of dialling in the mid-nineteenth century is the account given by Dubois Pierre , Histoire et traité de l'horlogerie ancienne et moderne précédé de récherches sur la mesure du temps dans l'Antiquité … (Paris, 1852), who deploys a wider range of materials, literary and archaeological, for his account of ancient dialling than was available to seventeenth and eighteenth century writers, but who, like them, jumps straight from Imperial Rome to the Renaissance. The 18 pages of historical introduction that Abel Souchon included in his La construction des cadrans solaires (ses principes, sa pratique) précédé d'une histoire de la gnomonique (Paris, 1905), was hardly better than that of his seventeenth and eighteenth century predecessors, being a farago of unverified stories and confused chronology with the Middle Ages entirely ignored and only a few vague remarks made about the Renaissance.

Symeon Gabriel , Les illustres observations antiques … en son dernier voyage d'Italie l'an 1557 (Lyon, 1558), 43–48 and 77.

Zuzzeri Giovanni Luca , D'una antica villa scoperta sul dosso del Tusculo, e d'un antico orologio a sole tra lerovine ritrovato … (Venice, 1746).

Bandini Angelo Maria , Dell' obelisco di Cesare Augusto scavato dalla ravine del Campo Marzo … (Rome, 1750).

Delambre J. B. , “D'un cadran trouvé à Délos, et par occasion de la gnomonique des anciens”, Analyse des travaux de la Classe des Sciences Mathématiques et Physiques de l'Institut Royal de France , 1814, 26. The Castel Nuovo dial is now in the Palazzo dei Conservatori, Rome: Gibbs Sharon L. , Greek and Roman sundials (New Haven and London, 1976), no. 1036G, p. 152.

Antonini Carlo , Manuale di varii ornamenti tratti dalle fabriche e frammenti antichi per uso commodo de' scultori, pit tori, architetti, stuccatori, intagliatori dipietri e legni, argentieri, giojelleri, recamatori, ebanisti &c … (Rome, 1781–90). The series of sun-dials is contained in vol. iv. A few years later Montucla J. F. , Histoire des mathématiques …, new edn (4 vols, Paris, an VII (1799) — X (1802)), 722–5, also described such ancient dials as had been excavated up to his time.

Gibbs , op. cit. (ref. 17).

Davies T. S. , “An inquiry into the geometrical character of the hour lines upon the antique sundials”, Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, viii (1818), 77–122. Rayet G. , “Les cadrans solaires coniques”, Annales de chimie et de physique, 5e sér., vi (1875), 52–86.

The meantime of Greenwich Observatory began to be generally distributed in Britain from 1851 onwards, and became the legal time of the nation in 1880. See Howse Derek , Greenwich time and the discovery of the longitude (Oxford, 1980), ch. 4. The meantime of the Paris Observatory, already widely used by the railway network, became French legal time on 14 March 1891 (ibid., 153).

Blanchard Raphael , “L'art populaire dans le Briançonnais: Les cadrans solaires”, Bulletin de la Société d'Etudes des Hautes Alpes, 2nd ser., xiii (1895), re-issued separately (Paris, 1895; 2nd edn, 1901).

Guillaume Ch. Ed. , “Les cadrans solaires à propos de deux instruments anciens”, La Nature: Revue des sciences et de leurs applications aux arts et à l'industrie, xix (1891), 25–27, p. 25. For a similar expression of a sense of the death of dialling see de Moucheron le Comte , “Les derniers cadrans solaires du Perché”, Revue Normande & Perchéronne illustré, iv (1895), 256–68.

For a flagrant example of the genre see Valuer Gustave , “Anthologie gnomonique du Département de l'Isère ou ce que disent les cadrans solaires”, Revue de Marseilles et Provence, xxii (1876), 329–418, 460–76.

See Borchardt Ludwig , Altägyptische Zeitmessung (Die Geschichte der Zeitmessung und der Uhren, Bd 1, Lf B; Berlin and Leipzig, 1920), 25B–36B. Frankfort H. , The Cenotaph of Seti I at Abydos (Egyptian Exploration Society Memoir, 39; London, 1933), 76–81.

Borchardt , op. cit. (ref. 25), 47B–48B.

Powell J. Enoch , “Greek timekeeping”, The classical review, liv (1940), 69–70.

Robertson D. S. , “The evidence for Greek timekeeping”, ibid., 180–2.

A detailed discussion of the origins of dialling in Greece will be included in my Sun-dials, meridians and nocturnals: A history illustrated by examples from the collection of The Time Museum, Rockford, Illinois (in preparation).

Gibbs , op. cit. (ref. 19), 71 and 77.

Although the text was first published late in the nineteenth century it has only recently been studied. See Pattenden Philip , “Sundials in Cetus Faventinus”, The classical quarterly, n.s, xxix (1979), 203–12.

See Price D. J. , “Portable sundials in Antiquity including an account of a new example from Aphrodisias”, Centaurus, xiv (1969), 242–66. Field J. V. Wright M. T. , “Some Roman and Byzantine portable sun-dials and the London sun-dial calendar”, History of technology (forthcoming).

By Pattenden Philip , “A late sundial from Aphrodisias”, Journal of Hellenic studies, cl (1981), 101–12.

For a description see Gounaris George , “Anneau astronomique solaire portative antique découvert à Philippes”, Annali dell'Istituto e Museo di Storia della Scienza di Firenze, v, 2 (1980), 3–18.

de Orus Juan J. , “Un cuadrante solar de la Alcazaba de Almería”, Homenaje a Millas-Vallicrosa (2 vols, Barcelona, 1954–56), ii, 131–42. Cabanelas Dario , “Relojes de sol Hispano-musulmanes”, Al-andalus, xxiii (1958), 391–406. King David A. , “Three sundials from Islamic Andalusia”, Journal for the history of Arabic science, ii (1978), 358–92.

They will be included in ch. 2 of the history of sundials referred to in ref. 29 above.

Abū al-Rayḣān Muhammad b. Aḣmad al-Bīrunī, The exhaustive treatise on shadows, trans. with commentary by Kennedy E. S. (2 vols, Aleppo, 1976).

Sedillot J. J. (tr.), Traité des instruments astronomiques des Arabes composé au treizième siècle par Aboul Hassan Ali de Maroc … (2 vols, Paris, 1835).

For more detailed discussion see Turner , op. cit. (ref. 29).

Turner A. J. , “On the origin and diffusion of early medieval vertical sun-dials” (in preparation).

There is a detailed if over ingenious discussion of it by Binns A. L. , “Sun navigation in the Viking age and the Canterbury portable sundial”, Acta archaeologia, xlii (1971), 23–34.

The production of an accurate, portable sun-dial suitable for regulating watches with minute hands and precision clocks, was one of Deux problèmes de gnomonique à résoudre set out by de Hautefeuille in 1704. Not surprisingly he was much interested in meridians. For the solution to the problem produced by the clockmaker Julien Le Roy c. 1735 see Turner Anthony J. , “Les cadrans solaires de Julien Le Roy” in Cardinal C. Sabrier J.-C. , La dynastie des Le Roy Horlogers du Roi (Tours, 1987), 51–52 and 73; idem, “Julien Le Roy's improved horizontal sun-dial”, Antiquarian horology, xvii (1988), 463–6.