The 2025 Sawyer Dialing Prize went to Simon Wheaton-Smith "for his Illustrating Shadows publications and his dedication to making dialing knowledge accessible to all". Simon received a cash prize, award certificate, and glass Spectra Sundial made by Jim Tallman of Artisan Industrials.You can find his inspirational sundial website at https://www.illustratingshadows.com/ where his website presents many types of sundials and multiple methods of creating them.

If you need basic or advanced mathematics on sundials, the Appendices to Illustrating Shadows is just what you need. Wheaton-Smith's goal is to provide teaching aids and useful tools for making and using sundials. And there are a pot pourri of links to software programs, spreadsheets, and CAD scripts. In all, Illustrating Shadows contains 1,174 pages of sundialing knowledge made freely available to all.Thank you Simon.

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Last Updated: 12 July 2026

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The 2024 Sawyer Dialing Prize goes to Dennis Cowan, "for his decade-long project 'In the Footsteps of Thomas Ross', tracking and documenting Scotland's wealth of ancient sundials as originally recorded over a century earlier by Thomas Ross." In 2004 Dennis saw a magnificent obelisk with 76 distinct sundials in the garden of Drummond Castle, one of the dials recorded by Ross. From that point on, Dennis was determined to document and photograph as many of the sundials as he could find that appeared in Ross's work.

In the last of 40 BSS articles written by Cowan on the Scottish dials recorded by architect Thomas Ross, Dennis wrote "For around ten years now I have been walking with Thomas Ross, travelling all over Scotland, with a short detour into England, looking for the sundials that he catalogued mostly in Volume 5 of The Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland way back in 1892. In all, he identified around three hundred sundials and I have followed in his footsteps looking at many of them."

Fred presented Dennis with an award certification, the traditional cash prize of $250 and a custom made Spectra Sundial by Jim Tallman of Artisan Industrials.

http://www.artisanindustrials.com/world-of-sundials/spectra-sundial-outremont-quebec-canada.html

NASS thanks the British Sundial Society for its permission and collaboration to collate the 40 articles by Dennis Cowan into the digital publication "In The Footsteps of Thomas Ross - Tracking the Ancient Sundials of Scotland", which also includes the 1892 section on Scottish Sundials by Thomas Ross from Vol. 5 of The Castellated and Domestic Architecture of Scotland (pp. 357-514). Click on the following link to download this priceless compendium on Scottish sundials.

Cowan_In_The_Footsteps_Of_Thomas_Ross_2024.pdf162.65 MB

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Last Updated: 04 August 2024

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The 2023 Sawyer Dialing Prize went to François Blateyron "for his creation and continual development of the Shadows software for the design of sundials and for his constant encouragement of the construction of sundials around the world." François focused his interest in sundials to creating a versatile and easy to use software program for computing in 1997 and has been improving it ever since. Now, many different types of sundials and astrolabes can be calculated, supported by instructions in 17 languages and a database of more than 5000 locations around the world. Part of the popularity of his software is the ability to export vector format for artistic additions or in DXF format compatible with computer aided design software for engraving and tooling machines or 3D printing. François Blateyron in his article "The Sundial, from Antiquity to Computer Drawing" in Astronomy Magazine March-April 2022 stated his goal that, "it is evident how the talent of some can be expressed once the software eliminates the difficulty of the calculations."

Fred Sawyer and Steve Lelievre met with François via a Zoom conference to discuss sundials and his award. Fred sent François the award certification, the traditional cash prize of $200 and a custom made Spectra Sundial by Jim Tallman of Artisan Industrials that François proudly displayed in his window (left photo above).

Read more at: https://saf-astronomie.fr/francois-blateyron-recoit-le-sawyer-dialing-prize/

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Last Updated: 02 July 2023

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The 2022 Sawyer Dialing Prize went to Frans Maes "for his creation of an introductory course on dialing, built on the idea of supervised self-study; for his successful multi-year running of that course in Europe; and for his inspiration of NASS’ development of a North American version.”

Fred presented Frans with an award certification, the traditional cash prize of $250 and a custom made Spectra Sundial by Jim Tallman of Artisan Industrials.

Frans acknowledged the Sawyer Dialing Prize with two short video presentations. He thanked Fred and NASS for being awarded this year's Sawyer Dialing Prize saying "of course I'm honored and I'm flattered to be considered to join the league of so many great dialists that won the Prize before. I'm also proud to be the third Dutchman that was awarded this prize. Fer de Vries was the first awardee in 2000 and Hendrik Hollander in 2005." 25 years ago, Frans was looking for ways to embellish his backyard and someone suggested a sundial. "I didn't know anything of sundials, so I looked around for information and I found Waugh's book (Sundials - Their Theory and Construction) on my own bookcase... it made interesting reading and the sundial type that appealed to me was the analemmatic sundial... I liked most that you have to do something to read the time." He joined the Netherlands Sundial Society, and wrote about his sundial. Some years ago, while listening to presentation about a very interesting sundial, that included Babylonian and Italian hours, he hear someone ask: "Mister speaker, please can you explain what Italian hours are?...[and] I thought: what we do need is a form of internal education,...because if you know more of a subject, it makes it more interesting." Frans decided to write a course that included self assessment questions to force students not only to read the text, but to internalize the concepts. And a final submittal question "not necessarily a difficult question, but: no answer, no new lesson." Thus Frans Maes began writing lessons and sending them out to students. NASS has now used his material to create a similar course centered on North America, but still following the style of assessment questions and a final submitted question to proceed to the next lesson. Frans Maes, your dedication to educating people about sundials has now gone international.

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Last Updated: 25 June 2023

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