In the NASA Photograph of the Day for 27 June 2019 is a beautiful photograph by Gianluca Belgrado using a pinhole camera. https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap190627.html As explained by NASA, "This persistent six month long exposure compresses the time from solstice to solstice (December 21, 2018 to June 16, 2019) into a single point of view....Fixed to a single spot at Casarano, Italy for the entire exposure, the simple [pinhole] camera continuously records the Sun's daily path as a glowing trail burned into the photosensitive paper. Breaks and gaps in the trails are caused by cloud cover. At the end of the exposure, the paper was scanned to create the digital image...."
In 2011 Art Paque explained the art of solargraphy to members of the North American Sundial Society at their annual conference in Seattle. The construction steps involve creating a pinhole in thin foil, then taping the foil onto a tin can that has photographic paper inside and opposite the pinhole. The lid on the can is sealed and most important, pointed at the sky with firm support to prevent moving. The rest is up to nature as the sun crosses the sky each day. Beautiful solargaphs such as from Gianluca can be obtained with patience tracking the sun for three to six months. In the end your solargarph will be a day by day time capsule of solar observation.
Type "solagraphy" into your web search engine and you will discover a host of sites showing the details of making your pinhole camera. For example: http://www2.uiah.fi/%7ettrygg/camera.html and http://www.pinholephotography.org/Solargraph%20instructions%202.htm
Students at the University of Waterloo School of Architecture in Cambridge, Ontario are experimenting with the benefits of 3D design and printing. In particular Joanne Yau created a set of hexagonal hollow bricks called sundial arches that lets in sunlight from different portions of the arch as the sun travels across the sky. We expect that the length to width ratio of the bricks can tailor sunlight for specific times of the year (summer, spring/fall, or winter).
Joanne Yau was one of three teams challenged to learn how to operate a new industrial 3D printer capable of squirting out clay. Professor Correa, interviewed by 3Dprint.com said “There is no other way to make these kinds of façades without enormous cost and time,” said Correa, who has been involved in 3D printed research on an even more advanced level, studying how such objects respond when exposed to varying degrees of moisture and temperature. “They are completely unique.” “The printer allows us to make much more complex geometry,” said Joanne Yau, part of the team that 3D printed bricks for the ambitious arch/sundial. “To make this by hand or to extrude it would be virtually impossible.”
See a video of how the 3D clay bricks are created in an article by Bridget O'Neal June 5, 2019: https://3dprint.com/245698/whistling-walls-sundial-arches-ontario-architecture-students-3d-print-clay/
"Infinity Possibility" was dedicated this week [May 5th, 2019] at Brown University in Providence R.I. thanks to a grand design challenge to the university's School of Engineering by 1979 alum Charlie Giancarlo. Giancarlo wanted something "that would represent the rigor of engineering work, but have artistic beauty as well". According to Brown news, "A student group called Brown STEAM (Science Technology Engineering Arts and Mathematics) took up the challengte, and the result of more than two years work is a stainless steel noon mark sundial measuring 15 feet long and 4 feet high. STEAM’s then-president tapped Austin and David Schurman, both first year students at the time, as project managers. The pair assembled a team of around 20 students to start brainstorming ideas and getting input from the broader Brown community.
David Shurman and his team worked with a sundial expert, Bill Gottesman, a member of the North American Sundial Socity, Shurman said, "We wanted to explore the interplay of the mobius strip's shape with that of Brown's unique analemma path to make a sculpture personalized to the location it will inhabit for, hopefully, up to a century." In the end section of the "lazy eight" mobius strip is a hole allowing the noonday sun to fall on the northward piece of the strip below. The lower mobius band has an etched analemma showing civil noon in front of Brown's Engineering Research Center.
Read more: https://www.brown.edu/news/2019-05-08/sundial and https://www.davidschurman.com/copy-of-project-page-template
On May 3, 2019 new sundial graces the City of Kennesaw, Georgia just a short way from Atlanta. The Marietta Daily Journal reported the unveiling of the sundial, a large gateway sign, and a shade structure at the new townhouse site. Developers of Kennesaw Gateway Park, a new group of townhouses within walking distance of of town center, collaborated with Kennesaw State University (KSU) to design and fabricate a 9-foot tall horizontal sundial that has been placed in the circular plaza of the housing common area. Page Burch, a lecturer of KSU's Master Craftsman Program was the lead coordinator to design and fabricate the sundial gnomon. The stainless steel gnomon has a brass verneer and an unusual tilted based that nevertheless results in the the gnomon angle of 34 degrees exactly correct for the site latitude.
Credit is also given to the KSU College of Science and Mathematics for calculating the gnomon angles and hour lines for positioning the hour-mark disks. These disks are embedded in a circular arc in the concrete. The 6am-6pm disks line up behind the gnomon mount, but again are correct when the style edge is followed to th concrete floor, precisely intersecting the 6am-6pm line. No noon-mark separation was used to account for the approximate 6-inch width of the gnomon.
In June 2018 the Georgia Historical Society dedicated a historical marker in Chatham Square to Louis B. Toomer, which read in part "Louis Burke Toomer, African-American leader, local bank founder, and realtor, was born in Savannah in 1897. Raised and educated locally, Toomer established the Georgia Savings and Realty Corporation on February 23, 1927, in the historic black business district on West Broad Street. During segregation, the company provided banking, investment, and insurance services for blacks who were not always allowed access to white banking establishments...." [1]
But before the historical marker was the Louis B. Toomer sundial in Chatham Square. As Georgia Wright Benton (past president of the Savannah Chapter of the National Conference of Artists) recalled:
"The sundial was dedicted in the spring of 1963 by the Savannah Chapter of the National Conference of Artists ... an organization comprised of black students throughout Chatham County along with their art teachers. West Broad Street School for black students was closed in 1962 and the pupils were transferred to Barnard Street School. Members of the National Conference of Artists visited the new school and one of our members observed that the park in front of the school, Chatham Square, needed improvement. Beautification of Chatham Square became a project for the organization, and the group decided to place a sundial in the square. We wanted something permanent that represented the black community in front of the Barnard Street school."
"The organization held several fundraisers to pay for the sundial. The primary fundraiser was a concert held in the Beach High School auditorium during the fall of 1962. Our concert artist was Kiah’s sister, a soprano singer. The fundraiser was a success and the sundial was purchased with help from Carver State Bank and Toomer’s wife, Janie. ... This sundial was the first dedication to an African-American in a Savannah square contributed by black students of a black organization." [2]
Over the years vandals have attacked and damaged the sundial. Each time, members of the Savannah-Chatham Historic Site and Monument Commission restored the sundial, " [making] a public plea for help and a reminder to the monument marauder that destruction of public property is a felony..." [3] You can see more of this dial in the NASS Sundial Registry (Georgia/Savannah #942).
[1] https://georgiahistory.com/events/historical-marker-dedication-louis-b-toomer-founder-of-carver-state-bank/
[2] https://www.savannahnow.com/opinion/20181129/letters-to-editor-friday-recalling-history-of-chatham-square-sundial
[3] https://www.savannahnow.com/news/2012-01-18/vandals-target-chatham-square-marker
It started simply enough. Keith, a "treasure hunter" reported finding a 1733 sundial "in the Carolinas". (http://www.treasurenet.com/forums/my-best-finds/603181-1733-colonial-sundial-found-restored.html). The brass sundial about 5 or 6 inches in size was found crumpled and apparently had a number of modern attempts to solder a gnomon back onto the dial plate. Kieth reported, "When I found the piece it had been bent and damaged so I sent it to an expert in restoring metal objects....It has been the best find of my relic hunting career. I hope to get some detailed info from people who know about sundials."
The dial is done in the English style of the period, that is to say, the dial is cut as an octogon with a circular chapter ring with Roman numerals and delineated on the outside to the quarter hour. In the center is an 8-point compass rose with the cardinal points labelled "N,S,E,W". Four crude and somewhat modern screw holes held the dial to some modern base. The maker's initials D.D.M. are berlow the engraving of the original owner "William * Lane" with the date 1733.
As Kieth notes, "[The dial] is one of the earliest from southern colonial America". But the problem is where? The engraved latitude is "Latt: 34:30". Using Serle's ruler confirms that the delineated hour lines are between 34 and 35 degrees. That should allow a quick check of southern cities to identify the home of this dial. The center of population in the 1750's was Willmington, NC at 34:14. If we assume that William Lane was a farmer a person of means, then two possibilities arise: Blenheim SC and Laurens SC both at 34:30. Laurens County, in particular, was in the area where thousands of immigrants, mainly Scottish and Irish, settled in the pre-revolution Carolinas. Then there is Kershaw SC at 34:32 which was settled around 1732 by English traders and farmers who moved inland from Charleston. What was the provinance of this dial? We may never know, but you can search the below 1755 map from University of North Carolina library of historic maps for towns and river portsat: https://dc.lib.unc.edu/cdm/ref/collection/ncmaps/id/123
A team led by David Mearns reported on the oldest Mariner's Astrolabe in a recent article of the International Journal of Nautical Archaeology. During a 2013-2014 series of diving expeditions off the coast of Oman they discovered a Portugues solid leaded-gunmetal disk astrolabe. As the authors put it, "A well-documented and dramatic story from one of the earliest Portuguese foyages to India ... involves the loss off two naus [sailing vessels], the Esmeralda and Sao Pedro, which sank in shallow waters off the coase of a remote Omani Island in the Arabian Sea." What has made this legend is that these ships were part of a Portuguese armada to India led by the legendary explorer Vasco da Gama. Mearns tells the story that following the return of da Gamma and the main fleet to Portugal in February 1503, Vicente and Bras Sodre, uncles of da Gama, led their two ships back to patrol the waters off the south-west Indian coast. But Vicente sailed his squadron to the Gulf of Aden where they looted and burnt a handful of Arab ships. "Vicente then took his ships to Al Hallaniyah ...where they found a safe anchorage to shelter from the south-west monsoon...It was in this location, in May 1503, where a sudden and furious wind tore the two naus from their moorings and drove them against the rocky shoreline smashing their wooden hulls and causing the deaths of many crew, including the squadron commander Vcente Sodre"
Recovered from the ocean after 500 years was the 17.5 cm 344 gram metal Sodre astrolabe as well as more than 2000 other metal and ceramic artifacts. The were slowly desalinated over a period of two years. The astrolabe was clearly decorated with the Portuguese royal coat of arms at top and an esfera armilar (armillary sphere) at bottom. But there was no alidade or any visible gradations. Using laser imagery a total of 18 scale marks became visible along the limb of the upper right quadrant with a spacing of 5 degrees. These marks probably extended to make a full 90 degree quadrant. The solid metal Sodre astrolabe is a rarity, for shortly after 1500 a new generation of open ring astrolabes emerged. An illustration of a mariner's astrolabe from the Boria Chart (1529) shows a ring planisphere with angles marked for 180 degrees. The new open design remaind stable in the wind and became the dominant navigation instrument for the next 170 years. Read the full article at https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1095-9270.12353 or a short condensed version at World’s Oldest Mariner’s Astrolabe Found | Archaeology | Sci-News.com
Last February in the Panorama Armenian News an article reviewed some of the oldest sundials in Armenia. Piliposyan, Doctor of History at the Preservations Service for Historic-Cultural Reserve-Museums and Historic Environment (SNCOT) related that the oldest sundial may be on the Zvartnots temple dating to the 7th century. Sundials have been preserved on buildings of Dsegh, Tsakhkadzor, Dilijan, Noyemberyan as well as Nagorno Karabakh churches. Sundial also were curved on khachkars [Armenian cross-stones]. In the Panorama article Piliposyan said that apart from serving as clocks, sundials served as a means of communicating with god. He brought the example of the Zvartnots temple sundial found during excavations with enclosed documents calling on prayers to talk to god whatever time it was.
The vertical dials had horizontal gnomons and on the dial face there are typically 12 equally spaced divisions to mark the hours. Frank King commented on the dials that "These are variants of the standard European sundials used for indicating 'unequal [temporal] 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....The examples in the photographs seem very nicely made."
To appreciate the Medieval Armenian dials as well as modern interpretations, visit https://www.panorama.am/en/news/2019/02/23/Armenian-sundials/2076856