Print
Hits: 6529
056_albuquerque_mimosard
Thanks to Andy Robertson

Recent examination of our Sundial Registry revealed dials that no longer exist and have been replaced with something else that might resemble a sundial, but isn't.  Consider the brief entry of Dial 56 that may have once existed in Albuquerque, New Mexico on 9 Mimosa Road:

"5.5' stile, hour lines marked by 1/2' wire rope on grade. Total area is about 1000 square feet.  Analemmatic Dial" The description comes from a typed letter explaining that the dial was "built for research and marketing purposes".

This sounds impressive. One could image a 20 x 60 foot analemmatic dial carefully laid with stone markers and a large five and one half foot vertical staff stile casting shadows to the ground.  Andy Robertson, a dial enthusiast in  Albuquerque took camera in hand and in June 2011 visited the dial location.  Here's what he photographed:

This is not an analemmatic dial.  It's not a dial at all, but a lovely, modernistic sculpture.  It one of those angular bars had pointed to the north celestial pole and the Archimedes spiral was flattened to be in the plane of the celestial equator, this could have been a very impressive sundial.  Alas, it is just a work of art. And the Albuquerque dials #55 through #58 have been removed.  Dials that might have existed, but certainly no more.