Instruments · Sundial
Sundial, 1870–1900
- Maker / attribution
- Unrecorded in source
- Date
- 1870–1900
- Historical period
- Industrial Revolution (1850 – 1900)
- Country of origin
- Unrecorded in source
- Object type
- Sundial
- Dimensions
- diameter: 5.5 cm; height: 3.2 cm
- Holding institution
- Suomen kansallismuseo
- Accession / object no.
- SMM581:1
- Credit line
- Suomen kansallismuseo (via Finna)
- Catalogue title (original)
- kompassi - aurinkokello (Finnish)
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Record summary
Held and catalogued by Suomen kansallismuseo (object number SMM581:1), this is a sundial, dated 1870–1900. The Atlas places it in the Industrial Revolution period (1850 – 1900) of its Instruments collection. Recorded dimensions: diameter: 5.5 cm; height: 3.2 cm. The record is illustrated with 3 photographs.
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
Description — Suomen kansallismuseo
fyysinen kuvaus: Puisessa lieriönmallisessa, litteässä rasiassa kompassiruusu, jonka reunalla ilmansuunnat (s-ssw-sw jne). Sisäkehällä kellonajat (I-II-III jne). Keskellä pystyssä kolmiomainen metallilevy (aurinkokelloon kuuluva). Kello suojattu lasikuvulla.Rasian kansi lohjennut 3/4 pituudelta.
Shown in the original language of the source catalogue. An editor-reviewed English translation has not yet been published; we do not publish machine translations as authoritative text.
Historical context
Industrial Revolution (1850 – 1900)
American interchangeable-parts manufacture; railroad time standards; Swiss and German factory systems.
Instruments spread into industry, science and sport: stopwatches, chronoscopes, metronomes, watchmen's clocks and time recorders.
Read the period in the timelineMore instruments from this periodEarlier: Precision & Scientific Horology
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.
What to look for
- The latitude engraved on the dial plate or a latitude arc on the gnomon — it shows where the dial was meant to be used.
- The type of hour lines: equal (equinoctial) hours, Italian or Babylonian hours counted from sunset or sunrise, or unequal temporal hours on early and Islamic instruments.
- An inset magnetic compass and whether a magnetic-declination mark is drawn on its card — a useful dating clue because declination changes over time.
- Maker's signatures and town marks: Nuremberg compass-makers (Kompassmacher) often struck a personal mark and the town's punch.
- Additional scales such as lunar volvelles, wind roses, perpetual calendars or lists of cities with their latitudes.
Dating clues
- Ivory diptych dials are characteristic of Nuremberg between about 1500 and 1700.
- Butterfield-type dials with a bird-shaped adjustable gnomon point to Paris workshops from the late seventeenth century onward.
- Equation-of-time tables engraved on the plate became common after the mid-seventeenth century, once pendulum clocks made the difference between solar and mean time obvious.
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.
Read next:The history timeline
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