Instruments · Sundial
Sundial by Nicolas Bion, France, c. 1700
- Maker / attribution
- Nicolas Bion (maker)
- Date
- c. 1700
- Historical period
- Early Modern Horology (1600 – 1750)
- Country of origin
- France
- Place
- France, Paris
- Object type
- Sundial
- Materials / technique
- brass, kotelo, leather, läder, wood
- Holding institution
- Suomen kansallismuseo
- Accession / object no.
- H6169:
- Credit line
- Suomen kansallismuseo (via Finna)
- Catalogue title (original)
- aurinkokello ja kompassi; ekvatoriaalikello (ekvinoktiaalikello) (Finnish)
View the source record ↗ (opens another website in a new tab)Suggest a correction
Record summary
Held and catalogued by Suomen kansallismuseo (object number H6169:), this is a sundial by Nicolas Bion, made in France, Paris, dated c. 1700. The Atlas places it in the Early Modern Horology period (1600 – 1750) of its Instruments collection. Materials and techniques recorded by the source: brass, kotelo, leather, läder, wood. The record is illustrated with 6 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: Osoittimen korkeus on säädeltävissä olinpaikan leveysasteen mukaisesti. Kellon alapuolella on lueteltu eri kaupunkien leveysasteita. Numeroasteikossa luvut aamukolmesta iltayhdeksään.
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 An editor-reviewed English translation has not yet been published; we do not publish machine translations as authoritative text.
Inscriptions & marks
signeeraus: N. Bion. À Paris
Historical context
Early Modern Horology (1600 – 1750)
Huygens' pendulum and balance spring transform accuracy; English makers develop the anchor and deadbeat escapements.
Pocket sundials, Butterfield dials and sandglasses remained essential companions to imperfect clocks; navigators used sandglasses and the log line; observatories began to combine telescopes with pendulum clocks.
Read the period in the timelineMore instruments from this periodEarlier: Renaissance 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
Related records
Instruments · 1680–1733
Pocket sun-dial, brass, by Nicolas Bion, Paris, France, 1680–1733.
Science Museum Group, London
Instruments · 1680–1733
Universal Dial, signed "N. Bion, Paris"
Science Museum Group, London
Instruments · 1700–1725
Sundial by Nicolas Bion, France, 1700–1725
Science Museum Group, London
Instruments · 1690–1730
Horizontal sundial
Department of Decorative Arts of the Louvre
Instruments · 1600–1650
Nocturnal, France, 1600–1650
Rijksmuseum
Instruments · 1600–1699
Sundial, France, 1600–1699 (no. 57146)
German Clock Museum
Instruments · 1600–1699
Sundial, France, 1600–1699 (no. 57147)
German Clock Museum
Instruments · 1601–1700
Column sundial of ivory, height 3½-inches, French, 1601–1700 (see note).
Science Museum Group, London