Instruments · Sundial
Sundial from Liverpool Road Station, Manchester, 1833.
- Maker / attribution
- Unrecorded in source
- Date
- 1833
- Historical period
- Precision & Scientific Horology (1750 – 1850)
- Country of origin
- England
- Place
- unknown place, unknown place
- Object type
- Sundial
- Dimensions
- overall: 285 mm 530 mm,
- Holding institution
- Science Museum Group, London
- Accession / object no.
- Y1994.68.2
- Credit line
- Gift of British Railways Board
- Catalogue title (original)
- Sundial from Liverpool Road Station
Record summary
Held and catalogued by Science Museum Group, London (object number Y1994.68.2), this is a sundial, made in unknown place, unknown place, England, dated 1833. The Atlas places it in the Precision & Scientific Horology period (1750 – 1850) of its Instruments collection. Recorded dimensions: overall: 285 mm 530 mm. 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
Science Museum Group description
This sundial was made in 1833 for use at Liverpool Road Station in Manchester. It was placed on a pillar above the first class passenger entrance and could be seen from the waiting room. This station was the Manchester terminus of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, the world's first purpose-built passenger and goods railway. The opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway heralded a new transport era. The new railways brought other changes. In the 1830s clocks were set to local time taken from sundial readings, which meant that railway timetables had to allow for local time variations. From the 1840s, railway companies campaigned for a system of 'universal time'. When Parliament declined to act, many railway companies decided to adopt 'London time' for their timetables. The latitude and longitude of the station are inscribed at the top of the sundial so it could be correctly positioned to tell the time with a reasonable degree of accuracy. The triangular “fin” of the sundial is called a gnomon, and must also be at a particular angle to the base depending on where the sundial is located. This means that this sundial, designed to be used in Manchester, could not tell the correct time in New York or Sydney.
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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