Sundial - Equatorial, Lorenz Grassl, Augsburg, Germany, c. 1750-1800

Record summary

Held and catalogued by Museums Victoria, Melbourne (object number ST 20999), this is a sundial by Lorenz Grassl, made in Augsburg, Swabia, Bavaria, Germany, dated c. 1750-1800. The Atlas places it in the Precision & Scientific Horology period (1750 – 1850) of its Instruments collection. Recorded dimensions: 2.5 cm (Height), 6 cm (Outside Diameter); 6.3 cm (Length), 5.8 cm (Width), 3 cm (Height). 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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