With the Masters Tournament playing in Augusta and the return of Tiger Woods, many golf enthusiasts think back to other great players.  One of the greatest was Bobby Jones.  John Steinbreder writes about a sundial in his honor, "Another reminder of Jones here [at the Augusta National Golf Club] is a small bronze statue just 18 1/2 inches in height that is part of a working sundial outside the Member Golf Shop and just across from the first tee. The effigy boasts a rich, brown patina and etched across the lower part of the sundial are the words: 'Slow Back, Time Right.'

Back in the 60's Pete Pascale found the statue and dial in a scrap metal dumping ground in Erie, Pensylvannia.  After cleaning and repairing the statue, he gave it to Rick and Hank DeDionisio who ran Ricardo's Restaurant in Erie.  The brothers were avid golfers and in turn presented the figure and dial to their Downing Golf Club.  As Steinbreder writes,"...the brothers and club hit upon the idea of offering the statue to Augusta National, because of their admiration of Jones. They asked John May, a senior editor at Golf Digest, to act as an intermediary, and the journalist contacted Roberts in a letter dated May 18, 1972. Some time later, the Sundial took its place outside the Member Golf Shop."

Read about August National and the Sundial at: http://www.goerie.com/sports/20180406/erie-residents-helped-iconic-sundial-reach-augusta-national

It is believed that Edwin E. Codman, the English artist crafted the piece in the 1930s, using Jones as the model for the figure. Codman spent the early part of his life in England working at the Gorham foundry, creating small exquisite bronze sculptures.  In 1931 he moved to Dorset, Vermont where he and his wife lived quietly until his death in 1955.  Looking at history, Bobby Jones won fame between 1923 to 1930, culminating with the Grand Slam that included the British Amateur and British Open.  It is very plausible that Codman made the sculpture and sundial in 1930 to recognize the fame of this retiring golfer.

The real story behind the Bobby Jones sundial is ultimately instructive for the world of golf: In Augusta, it doesn't tell correct time, even solar time.  If Codman made the sundial in the UK, it explains the angle of the golf club shaft, closer to the latitude angle of London at 51° rather than 42° (Erie, PA) and certainly not 36° degrees (Augusta, GA).  This may be confirmed by the face of the dial, where the hours span from 4am to 8pm, allowing for the variation of sunlight in England, not Georgia.

So the joke is on all those golfers who look to the Bobby Jones sundial, as the only time telling device on the course: it has never told correct time (except for noon) in Augusta and never will.  It would be fun to get a rubbing of the dial face to prove it runs on London time.   
 

Details

Last Updated: 09 April 2018

Hits: 13983

Did you know that Thomas Jefferson designed sundials and thought that a book of trigonometric tables was one of his most valuable books?  And that Benjamin Franklin made a "modest" proposal for an extension of the noon-day sundial canon? And that his sundial design is on the Fugio 1787 coin, sometimes called the Franklin Cent?

Join  Fred Sawyer, eminent sundialist and president of the North American Sundial Society as he explores sundial history with the United States founding fathers George Washington, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson in three video presentations.  The videos are taken from a presentation he made two years ago at the annual meeting of  the NASS in Indianapolis.  See these videos at: http://localhost/Nu5/index.php/videos/historic-sundials

Learn more about sundials, their construction and their history by joining the North American Sundial Society.  Go to http://localhost/Nu5/index.php/join-or-renew and join now.

Details

Last Updated: 07 April 2018

Hits: 9490

In 2000 the North American Sundial Society held its annual conference in San Francisco and visited the Ingleside Terraces Sundial. A century ago the site was a racetrack and as it turned into a housing development in 1913, a promotion sundial was installed with the advertisement  "largest sundial in the world".  Michael Callahan of "This Forgotten Day in San Francisco" talks about this historic dial and the developer Joseph A. Leonard of Urban Reality Improvement Company on November 15, 1913.

 

Details

Last Updated: 17 September 2021

Hits: 13150

Chelsea Book Fair - Rare Foster ManuscriptIn 1636 or 1637 Samuel Foster, a distinguished Professor of astronomy at Gresham College produced a manuscript that describes the construction and use of an analemmatic sundial, a vertical sundial, and a declining sundial. 

The collection of 12 pages on four double leafs each measure 15 x 18 cm.  This manuscript relates to Samuel Foster's most important invention, a computational device known as a dialling scale, and precedes the publication of his second and most significant book in 1638 "The Art of Dialling: by a New, Easie, and Most Speedy Way ..."

The manuscript goes on auction by Voyager Press, an exhibitor at the Chelsea Antiquarian Book Fair at Old Town Hall, King's Road, London (51° 29' 14.9"N 0° 10' 07.3"W) on Friday Nov 7th and Saturday Nov 8th 2014. Foster's manuscript is available at a starting price of £4500.00. 

The Chelsea advertisment states, [See: Chelsea Book Fair - Rare Foster Manuscript] "Foster's manuscript writings are exceedingly rare with the latest manuscript appearing at Sotheby's Macclesfield sale in 2004. Four of Foster's treatises on dialling are bound in an eclectic volume of tracts by numerous authors which is held in the Emmanuel College library."

As described by the Chelsea auction, "In 1638 Foster wrote 'The Art of Dialling; by a New, Easie, and Most Speedy Way... how to describe the Houre-lines upon all sorts of Plaines, Howsoever, or in what Latitude soever Situated...' which was printed in London by I. Dawson for F. Eglesfield (sold at the signe of the Marigold in Pauls Church-yard). This work described the construction of horizontal, vertical and inclining sundials using his dialing scale, the first circular nomogram. In his appendix, 'shewing a ready way to find out the latitude of any place the Sunne... By the Meridian Altitude, and declination of the sun had; how to find the Latitude of the place, or the elevation of the Pole above the horizon', Foster recommended observing the altitude of the Sun above the horizon at mid-day (i.e. its highest point), and supplied a table of correction factors for the Sun's position along the ecliptic on every day of the year. He concluded the appendix with a worked example."

But the North American Sundial Society has a wonderful opportunity for you to obtain a Samuel Foster document for a fraction of the manuscript cost! ...

No, NASS does not have a copy of any of Samual Foster's manuscripts.  But it does have a copy of Foster's most significant book "The Art of Dialling" and through LuLu books, you can have a personal copy for only $18.  To order, go to: Lulu Books - Foster The Art of Dialling-1638

Samuel Foster’s "The Art of Dialling" is particularly noteworthy for two reasons. First, it contains the first appearance of dialing scales. For over two centuries following Foster, the latitude and hour scales he introduces in this book were recognized as providing the simplest means for laying out hour lines. Although George Serle was probably the first to put the scales on a ruler, he himself clearly attributes their invention to Foster. Second, it includes an interesting approach to drawing a dial on an arbitrary plane: Foster demonstrates how any plane can be treated as though it were the special case of a direct east - west plane, and then he completely solves the special case. This book consists of a facsimile reprint of the 1638 edition of The Art of Dialling. It also includes the full text of the 1675 edition produced by Leybourn and a paragraph by paragraph comparison of the two.

Now we have even a better deal for dialing.  Go to this website's Features/Sundials for Starters and read the article on Sundial Latitude to learn how to use George Serle's Ruler to determine the properties of an existing sundial or to create a dial of your own.   And at the bottom of the Sundials for Starters article, we provide a download photo of Serle's Ruler so you can draw (decline) your own sundial. Or, you can copy this photo:

Details

Last Updated: 07 April 2018

Hits: 13018