MEASURING TIME

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 149, 16 February 1932, Page 7

MEASURING TIME

ANCIENT METHODS CURIOUS OLD COLLECTION OF SUNDIALS AND WATCHES. ONE UNEARTHEDi AT POMPEII. Probably the first sundial was the invention of some Chaldean shepherd who stuck his staff in the ground. and marked by stones the progressive shadows of the sun's day. An earlj historieal instance of a sundial is thal I of Abaz (II ICings, 20-11), whc reigned over Judah from 741 to 72 £ | B.C. Two hundred years after the time of Ahaz our next historieal sun. dial appears in Greece, and we finc Diogenes asserting that Anaximandei of Miletees invented gnornon (says the Weekly Seotsman). The sundial of the Chaldean astronomer Berosus, who lived about 34C ; B.C., remained in use for eenturies, and four specimens have been found in Italy, one of which was unearthecl at Pompeii in 1762. The Romans obtained dials from the Greeks, which divided the. day into equal portions. Papirius Caesar placed a sundial in the court of the Temple of Quirinus, in 293 B.C., and during the first Punic War a sundial was captured by Valerius at Catania, in Sicily, and set un in the Eorum in 263 B.C. By the time of the Roman occupation of Britain the knowledge of dial eonstruction had advanced greatly. A haost interesting example, dividing the day into twelve parts, was found, done in mosaic, on a tesselated pavement in a Roman villa in the Isle of Wight, in occupation about the third or fourth century. Hundreds of tourists go to -Brading to see it. There is also a piece of a broken Roman sundial in the Museum of Chesters, which divided the day and night into twenty-four hours. Old English Dials. The most ancient dial that has eome down to us is on the Cross at Bewcastle, Cumberland, supposed to date from about 675 A.D. The AngloSaxons followed thf decimal and duodecimal systems. At the little church at Kirkdale, Yorkshire, one of the few pre-eonquest chancels in existence is a most remarkable and valuable one, made about 1056, with a long Anglo-Saxon inseription to the right and left, a mqst valuable example of the pure. About this time Mass docks were introduced into the land. * Probably every church had one, for, so far as we knoWj they were cheap, easily eonstructed, they formed the only means, then known, for the measurement of time, and durahle, but except for what can be learnt from the remains of them carved on our old church walls nothing is known. When the Normans conquered England they brought with them the duodecimal system of measuring time, which had long been iri force on the Continent. The day being now divided into twelve hours, the old AngloSaxon dials, wtih their four tides to the day, became useless. But on many ancient dials of this period the two systems have been found combined, s'omewhat puzzling to the antiquarian. The Coming of Clocks. After the introduction of clocks, Westminster Abbey had one in 1288, and Wells in 1390. We may almost say that the practical mission of the sundial was at an end. By the end of the fourteenth century clocks were fairly eommon in towns, but in country places the people still clung to the picturesque sundial. Most of the seventeenth century sundials are of great beauty. What could excel the fascination of Queen Mary's dial, in the garden on the eastern side of the Palace of Holyrood House? It is a very remarkable one, and has a separate gnomon on each of the twenty ddes of the apex of the pedestal. The minute lettering upon its face shows that the older portion dates from about 1564, while the later parts were added in the time of Charles I. The Lothians abound in beautiful sundials, and a detailed description of them would fill volum.es. At the old Royal hunting seat of Bavelaw Castle is a very perfect one, with the following inseription: — "The sun-lit dial shows the fleeting hours of day." The lectern dial at Lauriston Castle is dated 1634, and has about thirty dials on it. At Lennoxlove there are three dials, one of which is most remarkable and unusual. It is dated 1679, and was removed by the present owner from North Bar House, Renfrewshire. On a base of two octagonal steps, a fernale figure, clothed in the eostume of the period, supports a dial stone on her liead. Round her neck is a string of beads, with a heart-shaped pendant, and in her ears are drop-shaped ear-rings. The dial stone is an octagonal hlock, with seventeen faces, the whole about 7ft high. On the south lawn is a round horizontal dial, with a baluster shaft— no date— -but on the metal face is engraved "David Lyon, Sculpist." On the mansion house itself is an angled dial dated 1644. In the Royal Scottish Museum is at present to be seen a very valuable and unique colleetion of various timerecording instruments brought together with a rare combination of taste and scientific knowledge and perception by the late Sir John Findlay, Bart., of Aberlour, and lent by Harriet, Lady Findlay, D.B.E., and Sir Edmund Findlay, Bart..