Search

Copyright of Hipogrifo: revista de literatura y cultura del siglo de oro is the property of Hipogrifo: revista de literatura y cultura del siglo de oro and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The present article addresses the Turkish translation of John F. Healey’s article titled “A Nabataean Sundial from Madā’in Sāliḥ” as originally published in the journal Syria (vol.66, nr. 1/4) in 1989. J. F. Healey’s purpose in writing this article was to draw attention to an important Nabataean sundial from Madā’in Sāliḥ in al-Hijr (ancient Hegrà), a pre-Islamic archeological site situated in the Hejaz area of the Arabian Peninsula. Healey also referred to the Nabataean altar from Dumayr near Damascus in Syria, which has had a sundial added to it. The Turkish translation was made to introduce Turkish readers to the two sundials Healey had studied. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The spread of a unitary time grid over the whole world is a remarkable aspect of globalisation. Time is not a natural given; as suggested by Norbert Elias, it is a means, devised by humans, for comparing processes of various speed and duration. As such, it is function of “timing” – an activity which is inherently place-bound. Four phases can be distinguished in the development leading up to universal global timing. In Phase 1 there are no instruments for dividing the day into clearcut intervals such as hours. Phase 2 brings various instruments such as sundials and waterclocks with which the day is divided into 24 hours of unequal length. In Phase 3 the mechanical clock makes standardisation of the hour possible. In Phase 4 the world is divided into 24 time zones, with a synchronised schedule of hours, minutes and seconds spread globally as an invisible net. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 18th century was marked by the appearance of a great number of unusual objects in Russia. Besides military ships, wardrobes and beds, wigs and Holland-fashioned suites they were all kinds of scientific instruments – compasses, astrolabes, sundials, clocks, bisecting dividers, electrostatic machines etс. They were visible and tangible signs of western culture, processes of Russian modernization and westernization. And besides the obvious for us today means of usage they had some other ones. Many instruments were multi-faceted. As a rule they all were rear and expensive things, hand-made by individual order in just few or even the only exemplar. Not everyone could use them. So the instruments demonstrated the high level of education and the high social status of the possessor. The instruments were used for entertainment both at the court and for general public. This kind of court activities was an important tool of attracting attention and state investments to the scientific researches. Clocks, sundials and telescopes played diplomatic role as gifts both on the level of transnational communication and on the local one (the establishment of good relations between arriving expeditions and local authorities). At last local peasants preserved the strange objects possessed by alien-dressed men as a super-modern weapon of pillage.

Copyright of Staleta Praha is the property of Narodni Pamatkovy Ustav and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The article deals with a remarkable collection item from the collection of the Regional Museum in Olomouc – a portable solar universal mechanical equatorial clock with a minute dial. In addition to its description, the article places it in the context of the beginnings of the sundial with a minute dial. Thanks to an analysis of the diaries of the Sternberg Augustinian monastery, it was possible to find out more details about the creator of the clock, the prefect of the Náměšť nad Oslavou estate and the skilled mechanic Johann Michael Faselli (1683/4–1756). However, the diaries also later document the role played by measuring time and the associated ownership of clocks and watches in the daily life of monks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globes and armillary spheres have strong affinities with sundials—they can share the same symbolism and iconography, for example. In this paper we examine an unusual object of about the second century CE, found at Tor Paterno—a statuette of Atlas supporting a sundial. We find that the dial was modified around the year 1800 to tell time in modern, equinoctial hours. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is concerned with the tools and methods of calculating time. As we went back to the earliest times, we found that time was not important in primitive man, and then the modern age began, in which man settled relatively. The Egyptian civilization began to make its own hours, and then the Greek and Roman civilizations developed various kinds of clocks. Plato invented a water clock and an alarm clock in Athens, And when we came to Islam, Muslims were in dire need of precisely defining the prayers. Hence, the Arabs were able to develop the time machines where the Muslim Philosophers set up a set of religious clocks. (9h / 15m), high towers that were located next to the main mosques in each city, The plan was a huge tower with a square base, and a tower opening to the bottom of the tower leading to the interior. Which includes a wooden ladder Construction of the building began in the Ottoman Empire in the middle of the 10th century AD. The Ottomans built towers in many cities, whether inside Turkey or the country under their rule. Study and research.

The purpose of this work is to study fourteen ancient sundials from in-situ measurements and discuss the significance and importance of time measurements in antiquity. The time measuring marble devices have been found in Attica, Greece (at National Archaeological Museum, Piraeus Museum, Stoa of Attalos at the Athens Agora, Epigraphical Museum of Athens). These sundials date from the Hellenistic and Roman period. Two of them still have the original gnomons. Six out of fourteen are preserved in good condition; the others are fragments of the original sundials. Detailed in-situ measurements along their present-day hour lines and curves (solstices and equinoxes) are taken. The methodology followed is based on Gibbs' methodology for south-facing conical sundials with slightly modifications/alterations depending on the present-day grid of lines and curves of the sundials. Conclusions about their geographical latitude of operation and their accuracy construction are drawn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Kwartalnik Historii Nauki i Techniki is the property of Polska Akademia Nauk, Instytut Historii Nauki and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Nomographs (or nomograms, or alignment charts) are graphical representations of mathematical relationships (extending to empirical relationships of data) which are used by simply applying a straightedge across the plot through points on scales representing independent variables, which then crosses the corresponding datum point for the dependent variable; the choice among independent and dependent variable is arbitrary so that each variable may be determined in terms of the others. Examples of nomographs in common current use compute the lift available for a hot-air balloon, the boiling points of solvents under reduced pressure in the chemistry laboratory, and the relative forces in a centrifuge in a biochemical laboratory. Sundials represent another ancient yet widely familiar example. With the advent and ready accessibility of the computer, printed mathematical tables, slide rules and nomographs became generally redundant. However, nomographs provide insight into mathematical relationships, are useful for rapid and repeated application, even in the absence of calculational facilities, and can reliably be used in the field. Many nomographs for various purposes may be found online. This paper describes the origins and development of nomographs, illustrating their use with some relevant examples. A supplementary interactive Excel file demonstrates their application for some simple mathematical operations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers the first comprehensive study of a newly discovered type of medieval sundial made of ivory which might well be the precursor of the well-known diptych dial form made from ivory and wood. These sundials are unique for the combination with a wax writing tablet (tabula cerata) on the reverse side, such as has been deployed as a reusable and portable writing surface in Antiquity and throughout the Middle Ages. Three previously unpublished examples of this type of sundial have been located in Germany, Italy and England. This article gives a detailed analysis of the sundials and the underlying construction principles, including considerations from the history of science, chronology and cultural history in order to answer the questions of where, when and by whom these sundials were made. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A method based on oblique projection is presented for construction of sundials. The derived formulas are classical, but usage of vectors and projections renders a coherent presentation rather than a number of special cases. The presented work is aimed to be useful for those taking a beginning module on vector algebra. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Magazine General Union of Arab Archaeologists is the property of General Union of Arab Archaeologists and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The restoration project of a seventeenth century sundial at Lerma (Spain) with incorrect engraved marks for the hour lines and devoid of its gnomon raised the issue of whether it is possible to predict what might be the reading errors when providing a new gnomon for it. Moreover, the analysis of possible slight changes in gnomon’s orientation and/or geometrical features to get better precisions was an appealing challenge. We must consider that Lerma’s case is not unique: templates were used in the past to engrave marks in numerous dials, and small differences in orientation were not taken into account. Differences in latitude under 0.5° were also neglected, by rounding off to integer values. Although Lerma’s sundial has been our guiding thread and its results are presented in detail, the method can be extrapolated to calculate reading errors for any dials with wrong marks for orientation or latitude different form the actual ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the construction, function, and origin of the solar dial in the Olsztyn Castle, traditionally attributed to Copernicus. The dial, preserved partially on the wall of the cloister and presumably designed to determine the time of equinoxes, served as an astronomical instrument mapping the daily paths of the sun in the sky. The article provides a comprehensive mathematical model of the instrument, taking into account the astronomical and architectural factors which affected its functioning. The analysis allows to alienate the essential properties of the dial as an observational instrument and to contend that measurements were recorded indelibly on the wall and averaged by interpolation. Furthermore, it reconsiders the arguments which support the hypothesis ascribing the construction of the Olsztyn instrument to Copernicus. (Some mathematical appendices appear only in the online issue of the journal.) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Serbia, as in many other European countries, there has been a widespread revival of interest in gnomonics in recent decades. An increasing number of sundials and a growing number of publications on gnomonics demonstrate the popularity of sundialling. Accordingly, it is interesting to find out which gnomonic terms are used, when they appeared and how they developed. In Serbia (and the countries formed after the disintegration of the former Yugoslavia), societies of gnomonics enthusiasts do not exist and therefore it is not reasonable to expect any concern intended to preserve gnomonic heritage or the existence of the gnomonic terminological system. This assumption has been confirmed by the analysis of publications in the field of gnomonics published in the Serbian language. Due to unfavorable historical circumstances in the Balkans, Serbian scientific terminology began to form rather late (19th century) and the first gnomonic terms appeared at the beginning of the 20th century. They were introduced in the articles of the Serbian astronomers, professors Milan Nedeljković (1902) and Vojislav V. Mišković (1930/1932). However, most of these terms have not been preserved. Contemporary gnomonic terminology is multidisciplinary, and when the terms belonging to neighboring sciences are removed, a small number of gnomonic terms remains. Among them, the following four are the key ones: gnomon, gnomonic projection, sundial and gnomonics. In this paper, a modified definition of the most important term - gnomon has been proposed as well as the definitions of all other key gnomonic terms related to it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An ancient horizontal marble sundial unearthed at Pompeii is described and discussed in terms of the following: the meaning and astronomical significance of the Greek shorthand inscriptions on the object, and its design and functioning as a time-keeping device on the basis of hyperbolic shadow projection by a vertical gnomon. Detailed calculations are carried out for the epoch just prior to the volcanic eruption, of the astronomical coordinates of representative stars in the constellations recorded on the sundial, as well as the solar coordinates required for the evaluation of the shadow markings. These calculations not only confirm the high quality of the workmanship displayed in the construction of the sundial, but enable an accurate estimate to be made of the original length of the missing gnomon: 2 digiti = 1/8 pes in Imperial Roman units. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]