"Where science meets Art"
Cultural history...
In his Hungarian Encyclopaedia, published in 1653 and aimed at systematizing all the knowledge of his time, János Apáczai Csere devoted the eighth section, "On Inventions," to listing dozens of innovations that significantly contributed to people's everyday lives. Among others, he mentioned the counting board, gunpowder, the oven, and last but not least, the sundial.
The division of the day into 12 or 24 parts can be found in all ancient civilizations. The earliest time-measuring devices they created relied on the supposedly uniform movement of the Sun to measure smaller segments of the day. The sundial was undoubtedly the first timekeeping device. It held particular importance among the Assyrian, Phoenician, and Egyptian peoples, as their subtropical climates meant the sky was clear for most of the year. It is essential, however, to regard the sundial as an astronomical timekeeping instrument, since it reflects both the Earth's daily rotation and its yearly orbit around the Sun at a given location.To demonstrate the importance of sundials throughout all eras of human history, here are a few examples:
The Persian poet and astronomer Omar Khayyam, author of the Rubáiyát, used a sundial around 1080 to help develop the new Islamic calendar.
In the Middle Ages, the sundial was the only relatively widespread astronomical instrument. During the siege of Buda in 1686, a Dutch soldier lost his pocket sundial (!) in one of the assaults, which was later discovered during excavations in Buda Castle in the 1970s.
Until the mid-19th century, sundials were used to verify the accuracy of less precise mechanical clocks.
A sundial, without a doubt, cannot compete with today’s accurate mechanical timepieces. However, for its owner, observing the functioning of their own sundial can bring far greater joy. Inseparably linked with human history, sundials can be found across the globe, adorning buildings and lending them a unique character and patina. At the same time, a sundial is a work of art in itself—a significant artifact from both a visual and art historical perspective. Often forming an integral part of the building (frequently a historical monument) on which it appears, it shares in that building’s fate.