News — sundial history

  Fascinating article (with extensive number of photos) on the diverse range of sundials in Israel. The traveler with an interest in historical and beautiful reproductions would be well advised to make a trip to Israel. The photo above shows a stone dial from Jaffa (photo credit Gadi Edelheit)   Link: Sundials In Israel

Excellent discussion on BBC 4's In Our Time with Melvyn Bragg on the history of time measurement. <<Melvyn Bragg and his guests discuss the measurement of time. Early civilisations used the movements of heavenly bodies to tell the time, then mechanical clocks emerged in Europe in the medieval period. For hundreds of years clocks were inaccurate but now atomic clocks are capable of keeping time to a second in 15 million years.>> stream, download or podcast In Our Time  

Beautiful photo montage of two Chinese equatorial sundials from Beijing, China. They both date from the Ming Dynasty (over 500 years ago.) Did you know that Sundial in Mandarin is rìguǐ 日晷 ? Link to Photos on Chinese Astronomy website (photo courtesy M. Shea)

With a gnomon reaching a height of 90 feet, the Samrat Yantra is an amazing stone sundial. Located in Jaipur, Rajasthan India, it was built by the Mughal King Jai Singh in the 18th century. Today it's a UNESCO World Heritage site.  http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1338