Instruments · Sundial
Sundial, Appenzell, 1784
- Maker / attribution
- Unrecorded in source
- Date
- 1784
- Historical period
- Precision & Scientific Horology (1750 – 1850)
- Country of origin
- Unrecorded in source
- Place
- Appenzell
- Object type
- Sundial
- Holding institution
- Museum Aargau
- Accession / object no.
- _kimnet_cho_5285700c_0163_3dbf_052e_562cd7b96501
- Catalogue title (original)
- Tischsonnenuhr (German)
Record summary
Held and catalogued by Museum Aargau (object number _kimnet_cho_5285700c_0163_3dbf_052e_562cd7b96501), this is a sundial, made in Appenzell, dated 1784. The Atlas places it in the Precision & Scientific Horology period (1750 – 1850) of its Instruments collection. 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
Catalogue description from Museum Aargau (German)
Die Sonnenuhr ist eine der ältesten bekannten Methoden der Zeitmessung und kann bis auf das zweite Jahrtausend v. Chr. zurückverfolgt werden. Während die Grundtechnik an sich sehr simpel ist und nicht mehr als einen Stock benötigt, um dessen wandernden Schatten zu beobachten, so erfordern genauere Messungen schon etwas komplexere Lösungen. Denn im Verlauf des Jahres ändert sich die Position der Sonne und die Dauer eines Tages und auch je nach Breitengrad muss die Position des Schattenwerfers neu eingestellt werden.
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 An editor-reviewed English translation has not yet been published; we do not publish machine translations as authoritative text.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
Precision & Scientific Horology (1750 – 1850)
Harrison solves longitude; Mudge invents the lever; Breguet's Paris workshop defines the modern watch.
The longitude problem was solved by the marine chronometer and lunar distance methods; dividing engines made precision scales possible, and observatories set time by transit instruments.
Read the period in the timelineMore instruments from this periodEarlier: Early Modern 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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