User talk:ClemRutter/Archives/2011/December

Southern Hemisphere sundials
I'm not sure what you describe as a 20th Century myth. It is certainly true that sundials are much less common in the Southern Hemisphere than the Northern. When I was in Chile a few years ago, I decided it would be fun to being a southern-hemisphere sundial, with the numbers running anticlockwise, home as a souvenir. But, despite much searching, I was unable to find one in Santiago, a city of 10 million people. Nobody had heard of such a thing. In the end, I made one myself, and set it up in the backyard of the friend's house where I was staying. His teenage daughter took pictures of it and showed them in her science class at school. As a result, lots of people came to see it, including photographers from a newspaper. In Chile, a simple sundial was a wonder.

Friends tell me that sundials are also virtually unknown in South Africa and Australia. In New Zealand there is one public sundial, but it is in disrepair, with the gnomon missing. Nobody seems to know how to fix it!

The asymmetry of the Equation of Time leads to one explanation of the bias in sundial use toward the Northern Hemisphere. Whether it is the only explanation, I don't know.

But yes, I agree that the sentence I wrote about other "postulates" should probably be deleted. It doesn't contribute much to the article.

DOwenWilliams (talk) 02:51, 8 December 2011 (UTC)


 * I haven't seen any references one way or the other- but I see this could slide into original research. A wikipedia evil though great fun between consenting adults- so here goes. All the texts I have come across treat dials as an artistic or scientific curiosity- adding a nineteen/twentieth century interpretation to what I am convinced was a precision instrument. If you look at the dilemma for a millowner in remote Derbyshire (and more so in the colonies)- they could purchase a accurate clock to time the length of the shifts etc but it would have to be set. Before the anchor escapement made pocket watches reliable he could only really set the clock by guess work. The conventional answer is that he used local time but for that you needed a noon mark.. or a pragmatic guess. Whitehurst & Son sundial (1812) ,( WikiGLAM visit to Derby) shows the length that the wealth would go to construct a precision dial- but sadly the museum had no idea what a treasure they possessed- it was displayed as an example of the beautiful object that a local firm made. It is in this light that I view 80% of the stuff published in the Northern hemisphere- and as I haven't the benefit of a field trip down south. I like the idea that the wilder oscillation of the EoT in Southern Winter leads to reduced confidence in dials- but can't see tha causality is proved or found a published reference.


 * www.360cities.net/image/merlo-san-luis-reloj-de-sol-argentina#11.60,-23.20,70.0 Merlo, San Luis(banned link)
 * Reloj-de-sol-en-Argentina


 * listado.mercadolibre.com.ar/Libro-De-Lectura-Reloj-De-Sol--4-Grado kids readers banned link


 * Now apart from the license- this looks more promising Santa Fe. I hope the lack of EoT corrections did not affect their celestial IRC link. --ClemRutter (talk) 10:44, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

In early times, sundials were considered to show the "right' time, and clocks were wrong. A few clocks were even made with complex mechanisms that allowed them to show sundial time, compensating for the Equation of Time! (I can't recall details right now, but I know the Differential (mechanical device) article mentions such a clock. It may have been the first use of a differential gear.) So very old dials in the Southern Hemisphere would not have been considered to have a problem with the Equation of Time. Only when clocks came in would things have become difficult.

I'm pretty fluent in Spanish, so I just read a couple of the things to which you gave links. The Santa Fe dial is probably older than clocks. The new one (2010) shown in the taringa.net link was designed by a guy from Spain. The title of the piece, "Sundial in Argentina", implies that such dials are unusual there. This one may be the first sundial most people have seen.

The phrase "reloj de sol" (or - del sol) ("clock of the sun"), which means "sundial", is shown in Spanish dictionaries printed in Spain. But I tried to find it in a Chilean dictionary and couldn't. Chileans don't even have a word for the device.

For my take on Wikipedia's obsession with citations, see my "user" page. You may find my "user talk" page interesting too.

Incidentally, I gather you are a Brit. So was I, originally. My parents lived in Birmingham, so that was my childhood home. I moved here to Toronto in 1973, so now I have a Canadian outlook on things.

DOwenWilliams (talk) 16:16, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

P.S. Ooops! I sent you to the wrong page. The mention of a clock that showed sundial time is in the article on the South-pointing chariot. That was another early device that may have used differential gears. DOwenWilliams (talk) 20:42, 8 December 2011 (UTC)

History of Rochester, Kent
Hi Clem,

My rewrite of this is nearing completion. Perhaps as a local historian you might care to cast your eyes over it. I probably won't get much chance to change or review it until the new year now. Martin of Sheffield (talk) 12:01, 22 December 2011 (UTC)

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Project discussions
FYI. --Kudpung กุดผึ้ง (talk) 07:07, 26 December 2011 (UTC)

Manchester mills
Hello, Thank you for your suggestion: I should be able to do this as there are not too many pages in that category.--Felix Folio Secundus (talk) 14:14, 30 December 2011 (UTC)