> Hello fellow sundial lovers--
>
> The September issue of the Bulletin of the British Sundial Society
> contains (pages 127-9) an article by Herbert Wright detailing how he
> designed and constructed, while interred in a Japanese prison camp in
> Lunghua, China, a marble sundial which uses unfolded analemmas to
> display clock time. Mr. Wright overcame enormous obstacles in
> creating his dial, and it took him more than a year. The dial is
> dated 1944, as far as I can tell. I have a scanned image of the dial
> available upon request. It's an 80k JPG file.
>
> Prior to seeing this article the earliest use of unfolded analemmas
> for EoT correction I had run across was a dial visited in Montreal
> during the 2001 NASS conference. A monumental equatorial sundial
> (1967) at the Planétarium de Montréal by Herman van der Heide, of The
> Netherlands, utilizes unfolded analemmas along its equatorial band.
> A nice touch on this dial is the use of different colors to aid the
> eye in following the date arcs. I have a 44k JPG file of this dial
> available upon request.
>
> My questions to Sundial List members: Do any of you know of an
> earlier (than 1944) dial using unfolded analemmas to supply the EoT
> correction, or of early published material concerning this? Is it
> known who was responsible for discovering the principle?
>
> Best wishes,
>
> Mac Oglesby
> Brattleboro, Vermont USA
This design is, surely, exactly what we were here debating around
February last year (see BSS Bull 2000.1 p 51, Mac's email of 28 Feb
2000). At that time, it was proposed to call it a Singleton dial. It now
seems more appropriate to call it a Wright dial, if indeed Herbert Wright
invented it.
Chris Lusby Taylor
Newbury, England
51.4N, 1.3W.
Hi Chris,
I guess at this point I'm more interested in tracing the history of
the concept and enjoying seeing various realizations than proposing
or voting on labels. But I am hoping that someday I'll learn the
name of the person who deserves credit for originating the concept.
Regards,
Mac
