Instruments · Sundial
Sundial - Compass, Kilpatrick & Co, London, c. 1925
- Maker / attribution
- Unrecorded in source
- Date
- c. 1925
- Historical period
- Golden Age of Mechanical Watchmaking (1900 – 1945)
- Country of origin
- England
- Object type
- Sundial
- Dimensions
- 5.5 cm (Outside Diameter)
- Holding institution
- Museums Victoria, Melbourne
- Accession / object no.
- ST 17707
- Catalogue title (original)
- Sundial - Compass, Kilpatrick & Co, London, circa 1925 (English)
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Record summary
Held and catalogued by Museums Victoria, Melbourne (object number ST 17707), this is a sundial, made in England, dated c. 1925. The Atlas places it in the Golden Age of Mechanical Watchmaking period (1900 – 1945) of its Instruments collection. Recorded dimensions: 5.5 cm (Outside Diameter). 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
Summary — Museums Victoria
Compass sundial, white plastic case and clear plastic dome, made by Kilpatrick & Co, London, circa 1925.
Physical description — Museums Victoria
Round white plastic case and lid that screws on, clear plastic dome over compass with circular paper scale attached. Gnomon fixed to centre of paper scale which is calibrated to show direction and hours for southern hemisphere in roman numerals.
Inscriptions & marks
Dial inscribed 'Kilpatrick & Co London.'
Provenance
Donation from Mr John Askew, 31 Dec 1928
Historical context
Golden Age of Mechanical Watchmaking (1900 – 1945)
The wristwatch displaces the pocket watch; waterproof cases, self-winding and grand complications.
Timing instruments became electrical and specialised: industrial time recorders, sports timers and aviation instruments.
Read the period in the timelineMore instruments from this periodEarlier: Industrial Revolution
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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