Sundials

Recently I was working on an article for my gardening column and I wanted a local tie-in to a sundial. I intended to write about setting a sundial because the summer date and solar conditions are best for this on June 15. (It is also good on April 15, September 1 and December 25.) However, the sundial I dug up was much more interesting instead. The segment in this photograph is from a sundial in Druid Hill Park that is 4 feet high and tells time in 14 different parts of the world, including, as you see here, “Rio Janero”. This sundial was once accurate but with daylight savings time it is no longer so. When it was refurbished during the early part of the 20th century it was covered in bronze. From what I read I guessed that that underneath of the bronze is stone. It was presented to the park buy the sculptor, Peter Hamilton, in 1892. It was moved on at least one occasion, and an old Baltimore Sun article I found in the Pratt Maryland room suggested that a tree was in the way.

Nowadays we don’t have much use for sundials but they are thought of as the first scientific instrument. They officially date back to the Egyptian period. The piece that makes the shadow is called a gnomon. In the old, old, old days, the gnomon was the sundial and it is suggested that Egyptian obelisks served this purpose. Mechanical clocks that we know were invented in the 1300s. They were considered not as reliable as the sundial, which is the true time. It was not until the late 1800s that clocks were considered reliable. Instead, people like had “noon marks” on their kitchen floors to tell when it was time to call the clan in for food. In times past, some did not consider their gardens complete unless a sundial was in it. In Victorian times ornaments such as sundials were very popular, hence the need to include one in Druid Hill Park. I say that lightly because with having to figure out 14 different times around the world for a sundial, Peter Hamilton’s work goes well beyond ornament.

Resources:

Setting an unusual sundial

Sundial history