horizontal dial;
moondial;
sundial;
compass-dial
- Museum number
- 1888,1201.311
- Description
-
Horizontal sun-dial and moon-dial; gilt brass and silver; octagonal; dial rests on three turned feet; pierced and engraved folding support for string gnomon; plumb-bob and slider missing; scale of latitudes for each degree over range of 47-54 degrees; there is a single hour-ring with moon's age ring within which is a rotating lunar time hour-ring from which lunar time can be read directly, but approximately, since the hour-spacings cannot be made to expand and contract, as required by geometry, as the ring is rotated. Compass set for declination 7°W; underside of compass box: names and latitudes of eleven towns, ten in Germany and one in Austria, are inscribed; The underside of the gnomon locating spring engraved with a foliage spray. Signed.
- Production date
- 1695-1705
- Dimensions
-
Length: 67 millimetres
-
Width: 64 millimetres
- $Inscriptions
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- Curator's comments
- A very similar instrument but with red enamel on the rotatable hour scale is at the Greenwich Maritime Museum, reg. no. AST0354; another is in the Bielefeld Huelsmann Stiftung, Inv. no. H-W 45; and still another at the Cambridge Whipple Museum, cat. no. 122, acc. no. 1190; see H. Higton, Sundials at Greenwich, Oxford 2002, no. 48, pp. 89-90.
- Location
- Not on display
- Condition
- Latest: 2 (Jul 2015)
- Acquisition date
- 1888
- Department
- Britain, Europe and Prehistory
- Registration number
- 1888,1201.311
