Len Berggren Explains His SundialsThe 2024 NASS Conference was held in Vancouver, B.C. June 20-23. As always, the conference opened on Thrsday evening the 20th with a host of door prizes, including two Equation of Time Ball Caps (Peggy Gunnerson & Marc Boone), Sundials: History, Art, People (Len Berggren), and many more items and winners.

The Friday bus tour started at Highlands Elementary School to view a Split Analemmatic Sundial by Brian Albinson (NASS #926), then to VanDusen Gardens to see Gerhard Class' Equatorial Dial (NASS #931). Lunch followed at a neighborhood pub-restaurant. To finish the afternoon, the tour visited Hours to Sunset dial at Cambie Park Community Garden (NASS #919), Simon Fraser University open-analemma equatorial (NASS #930). The last stop was at Len and Tasoula Berggren's residents with more sundials and refreshments.

José Monte presents the design of two Annalematic SundialsThe conference presentations included Burt's Solar Compass (Mark Montgomery, Realizing a Dream to construct a sundial (Mike Moghadam). A visit to Santa Maria degli Angeli to observe the meridian line(Tom Kreyche), An Azimuthal Volvelle Sundial (Fred Sawyer), Sundials as an Art Form (Frank King), Sciatheric Spirals (Peggy Gennerson), Canmore Sundial (Roger Bailey), The Life and Times of the Connecticut College Sundial (Tom Kreysche), The Oronce Fine Quadrant - Some Additional Thoughts (Frank King), Retrograde and the Sundial of Ahaz (Fred Sawyer) where the original Hebrew wording described retrograde movement of the shadow on a stairway, rather than time going backwards on a sundial,Two Kinds of Time: Repurposing an Atlas Dial Found at Tor Pateno (James Evans). Finding Time: Developing BC Gnomonics (Evan Boxer-Cook), Two Commemorative Analemmatic Sundials (Jose Montes), a short video on 3D Printing Complex Sundials (Bob Kellogg).

At the annual Conference Dinner for full participants, they received a 3D-printed Universal Ring Dial (Bob Kellogg) and a small 3D-printed Sayer Equant Sundial (Steve Lelievre) and card-based altitude dials (Roger Harris) plus a set of cutout dials delineated for Vancouver (Heinrich Stocker), The South-Facing Inveresk Dial: A Thomas Ross Conundrum (Frank King), and Comments on the Fort Prince of Wales Sundial (Fred Sawyer).

Download the retrospective: 2024_NASS_Conference_Vancouver.pdf462.41 KB

 

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Last Updated: 11 August 2024

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The 28^th annual meeting of the North American Sundial Society was held in Ann Arbor, MI from Jun3 8-11, celebrating 30 years of NASS.  The conference began Thursday night with a social event of meeting old friends, exchanging sundial stories and a set of sundial related door prizes.  On Friday dialists made the traditional sundial tour, with the first stop at Eastern Michigan University’s Sherzer Observatory. Here Thad Weakley was reunited with a dial he had created some 20 years earlier.  Among others, we saw the large horizontal dial (NASS #1084) at the Domino’s Pizza Headquarters, the interior cylindrical dial (#1084) at Michigan Memorial Phoenix Laboratory, and the Trebble Clef sundial at the Univ. of Michigan’s School of Music (#335).

On Saturday Fred Sawyer presented a sequel to his 2022 presentation on Time Boxes, with this year’s version being his new design of a bifilar Time Box.  Delegates received templates for two dials – one showing conventional hours and one for Italian/Babylonian Hours. During the conference Fred Sawyer made several presentations on the bifilar sundial, including the biography of its inventor Hugo Michnik,

Mark Montgomery presented a historical review of lunar volvelles and their most common features with an explanation of their operation.  He also discussed moon dials later in the conference.

Other presentations included Jack Aubert’s experience installing a simple vertical sundial on his house.  Bob Kellogg discussed the 3D printing of the universal bifilar, which were later handed out at the conference dinner. Dung ‘Zoon’ Nguyen presented a brief history and theory of ceiling dials.  Chip Cunningham reviewed his quest to understand solar time and presented his “Axial Dial” and Steve Lelievre talked about creating a unique vertical hour scale dial to tell the hours remaining until sunset.  Steve’s second variant shows solar time from 6am to 6pm and was given to delegates as a conference gift.

Frank King delved into the layout of antique hour lines on the famous Queens Dial in Cambridge.  The lines are drawn straight, but as Frank shows, they are part of a hyperbola. As the latitude approaches 67°, the lines develop a noticeable bend.

On Sunday, Frank King discused what happens if a highly polished gnomon is used for a planar dial. Depending on latitude and time of day, the usual shadows of a gnomon are accompanied by symmetrically-positioned bright equivalents.

Paul Ulrich’s talk returned us to the practicalities of making sundials. Paul presented a photo-catalog of a wonderfully diverse collection of usual and unusual dials in ceramic, metal, wood, string, card and other media. His emphasis was to “have fun with discovery.” Steve Lelievre describing his use of vector algebra in treating the outline of a (rectangular) window as a kind of bifilar sundial.  And Steve Lelievre described his use of vector algebra in treating the outline of a (rectangular) window dual as a kind of bifilar sundial. The final talk was presented by Bob Kellogg and covered his work, in progress, to design and construct a tellurion (a mechanical model of the sun-earth-moon system).

Download the Retrospective: 2023_NASS_Conference_Ann_Arbor.pdf

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Last Updated: 06 March 2024

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The 27^th annual meeting of the North American Sundial Society was held at the Holiday Inn – Vanderbilt in Nashville from 11-14 August.  The Thursday night social included meeting old friends, exchanging stories about sundials, and for a lucky dozen-plus attendees, receiving sundial books and related door prizes.  One of the highlights of Friday’s sundial tour was seeing the symbolic Armillary Sphere at the Tennessee Governor’s Residence.  There are three red enameled tomatoes (state fruit) for stars in the state flag, an eastern box turtle (state reptile), tulip poplar (state tree) branches at the north end of the gnomon, and a mockingbird (state bird), resting in the branches.

The NASS group also visited the Vanderbilt Equatorial Dial (NASS Registry #583), Sundial Park (#1055), a number of dials at Cheekwood Botanical Gardens, including a noteable dodecahedral dial (#1051).  The tour concluded visiting Montgomery Academy to see a vertical dial designed by Kenneth Lynch & Sons with the help of Fred Sawyer in 1999 (#425).

While at the Governor's Residence, the NASS Group photo was snapped

Download the Retrospective; 2022_NASS_Conference_Nashville.pdf

From left to right and front to back: Paul Ulbrich, Tish Grant, George Perkins, Fred Sawyer, Len Berggren, Phil Sawyer, Jack Aubert, Will Grant, Marvin Taylor, Bob Kellogg, Pam Morris, Frank King, Jeff Kretsch, Bill Thibault, Sarah Montgomery, Steve Johnson, Gloria Mielke, Aaron Montgomery, Betsy Wilson, George Wilson, Phyllis Montgomery, Joyce Robinson, Dave Robinson, Mark Montgomery, Jeff Brewer. Not shown: Susan Haynes and Marc Boone

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Last Updated: 01 September 2022

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The North American Sundial Society, after by-passing the 2020 Conference due to Covid restrictions, held the 26th annual meeting from August 5th - 8th at the Hilton Garden Inn, Center City, Philadelphia. The venue was similar to past conferences: Thursday night social and door prizes for attendees, Friday a bus tour of 11 sundials in the Philadelphia area, Saturday sundial presentations and annual dinner, finishing on Sunday with more sundial presentations and the annual general meeting (AGM).The dial tour took us walking through Philadelphia parks and arboratums and visits to University of Pennsylvania, Swarthmore College, and Haverford College.

Swarthmore Kolhberg HallAt Swarthmore we saw the modern vertical declining dial on Kohlberg Hall, designed by Martin Cowan. Frederick Orthlieb, professor and chair of the Dept of Engineering at Swarthmore "had a part in locating the bent-plate gnomon so as to give correct indications on the vertical wall. As installed, the gnomon's indicating edge (which lies on a Polar Axis) casts quite a short shadow in Autumn and Winter and requires some observing skill to make a close estimate of indicated time, but in Spring and Summer the longer shadow moves over the granite hour marks very plainly."

For the annual group photo attendees gathered around the "Point Where Things Change", a N-S meridian dial commissioned in 2001 by the Redevelopment Authority of the City of Philadelphia and designed by Michael Grothusen. The dial is on the grounds of Tasepoint Corporate Headquarters.

Download the Retrospective: 2021_NASS_Conference_Philadelphia.pdf

From Left to Right: Bill Gottesman, Joyce Robinson, Pam Morris, David Robinson, Bob Kellogg, George Wilson, Jack Aubert, Will Grant, Betsy Wilson, Jim Holland, Bill Thibault, Art Paque, Tish Grant, Fred Sawyer, Philomena Sawyer, Phyllis Montgomery, Jeff Kretsch , Mark Montgomery, Marvin Taylor, Zoon Nguyen, Kate Aubert, Pat O'Hearn, Roger Dignard, Paul Ulbrich

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Last Updated: 17 August 2021

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