Polyhedral dial by David Beringer, Germany, between 1777 and 1821

Record summary

Held and catalogued by Museo Galileo, Florence (object number Inv. 126), this is a polyhedral dial by David Beringer, made in Nuremberg, Germany, dated between 1777 and 1821. The Atlas places it in the Precision & Scientific Horology period (1750 – 1850) of its Instruments collection. Materials and techniques recorded by the source: wood, brass, painted paper. Recorded dimensions: height 170 mm, base 90x78 mm. The record is illustrated with 1 photograph.

Assembled from the source record's structured fields. Dates and attributions are given as the source states them; where a field is missing the Atlas leaves it blank rather than estimating.

Catalogue description

Atlas type guide

Sundials and solar time-finders

A sundial tells time from the position of a shadow cast by a gnomon or style. Because the sun's apparent motion depends on latitude, every fixed dial is laid out for a particular latitude, and portable dials either carry a latitude scale or are made for one region. Sundials show local apparent solar time, which drifts against mean (clock) time by up to about sixteen minutes over the year — the equation of time.

Portable dials were the pocket instruments of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. Nuremberg and Augsburg workshops produced folding ivory diptych dials with inset compasses; English and French makers sold brass horizontal dials, ring dials and the Butterfield type; Japanese and Chinese makers had their own traditions of compass dials. After mechanical watches became reliable, dials remained in use for setting them, and nineteenth-century heliochronometers were built to correct directly for the equation of time.

General guidance written by the Atlas editors about this kind of object. It is not a statement about this particular piece; for that, rely on the source record above and on physical examination.

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