Instruments · Sundial
Sundial, Germany, c. 1625-1630
- Maker / attribution
- Unrecorded in source
- Date
- c. 1625-1630
- Historical period
- Early Modern Horology (1600 – 1750)
- Country of origin
- Germany
- Place
- German
- Object type
- Sundial
- Materials / technique
- silvered and gilt copper and brass, paper, glass
- Dimensions
- closed: 247x257 mm
- Holding institution
- Museo Galileo, Florence
- Accession / object no.
- Inv. 1291, 1302
- Credit line
- Museo Galileo, Florence
- Catalogue title (original)
- Sundial (English)
View the source record ↗ (opens another website in a new tab)Suggest a correction
Record summary
Held and catalogued by Museo Galileo, Florence (object number Inv. 1291, 1302), this is a sundial, made in German, Germany, dated c. 1625-1630. The Atlas places it in the Early Modern Horology period (1600 – 1750) of its Instruments collection. Materials and techniques recorded by the source: silvered and gilt copper and brass, paper, glass. Recorded dimensions: closed: 247x257 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
Catalogue description — Museo Galileo
This box-shaped, finely chiseled German dial carries on the outer side of the lid a geographic mirror of the northern hemisphere. The inner side carries a revolving disk giving the Sun's position over a division corresponding to the lunar month. Inside the box are the equinoctial circle for the daytime hours with an index, an index arm, and an arc graduated for different latitudes. At the bottom of the box are a windrose, an opening with a compass for orienting the instrument (the magnetic needle is missing), and another revolving windrose. The outer side of the bottom carries a geographic mirror of the southern hemisphere, a circumference divided into degrees and days of the year, and a revolving disk with index arm and index for the positions of the Moon. Provenance: Vincenzo Viviani bequest.
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 · 1578–1631
Tablet sun-dial 532-68, V & A M. reg, ivory inscribed "Hans Troschel faciebat", German, 6in by 3 1/4 in, 1578–1631
Science Museum Group, London
Instruments · 1600–1636
Astrolabe, Germany, 1600–1636
Rijksmuseum
Instruments · 17th century
Sundial and compass. Gilt metal, engraved. Inscribed 'Franz Antoni Knitt Linz Fecit', German, 17th century.
Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Instruments · 1600–1699
Sundial by Leonhart Miller, Germany, 1600–1699
Badisches Landesmuseum Karlsruhe
Instruments · 1601–1700
Horizontal sundial for latitude 47 degrees, in ivory with string style. German, 17th century.
Science Museum Group, London
Instruments · 1601–1700
Quadrangular horizontal sundial, ivory, engraved and coloured, inlaid on wood (cracked)
Science Museum Group, London
Instruments · 1601–1650
Sundial with compass, copper, base plate 8 x 5 3/8-inches, unsigned, Germany, 1601–1650. Compass glass slightly chipped.
Science Museum Group, London
Instruments · 1601
Tablet Sundial, ivory, 5 1/2"x 3 1/2", Paul Reinman, 1601
Science Museum Group, London