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Ever since the dawn of time, man has been inventing ways to keep track of time (the science of timekeeping is called horology). An early Egyptian sundial is thought to date back to 1500 BC. In the ancient world, these timepieces were status symbols. Wealthy Greeks and Romans would erect public sundials with their name inscribed on them, in order to show their prestige in the community.
In America, sundials were an important method of keeping time until the first half of the 1800s, when the first truly affordable clocks were produced. Believe it or not, the heyday of the railroad had much to do with rendering the sundial obsolete – schedules and standardized timekeeping became of primary importance for the first time!
Though sundials have been crafted in many forms, they all tell time by casting a shadow onto the dial’s face, which contains numbers that correspond to the hours of a clock. The raised piece that casts the shadow is known as a gnomon. To calibrate a sundial to local time, the gnomon is pointed toward the North Star. However, geography and latitude also affect accuracy. Unless the sundial has been made specifically for the latitude it’s used in, it will be useless as a timepiece. Unless, that is, you are an accomplished astronomer who make the necessary calculations to correct the sundial for your latitude by tilting it with a wedge (to align the gnomon correctly with the earth’s axis).
One of the most romantic legends surrounding the sundial is that of Eleanor of Aquitane, who gave a pocket-sized sundial to her lover, Henry II, so he would be on time for their rendezvous. Perhaps this is the reason that sundials today are often inscribed with romantic phrases about the passage of time: “Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be”, “Perennis Amor” (Latin for eternal love), and “Love alters not with time’s brief hours” from Shakespeare’s sonnets. Miniature sundials were not uncommon, by the way, and were used the way we would use a watch today. There are references to the fact that the ancient Romans carried portable sundials.
Today, sundials are designed for decorative, not useful, purposes. They are found at gift shops and nurseries everywhere and make delightful, romantic accents for gardens both formal and informal. In a naturalistic garden, set one on a tree stump amidst the flowers. In a more classically designed garden, sundials make charming focal points on a formal pedestal. In traditional herb garden design, a sundial is always at the center of a geometric configuration of beds. It was the famous English landscape designer, Rosemary Verey, who coined the phrase “time on thyme” to describe her penchant for situating a sundial smack in the middle of a bed of thyme.
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