The Rural Voice, 1995-05, Page 28I count the bright hours only
Once time was measured by the movement of the sun
and the sundial was the elegant
instrument of measurement
Story and photos by Carl L. Bedal
The dirty thirties provided
no quartz wrist watch
for this farmer's son.
Instead, a human sundial
told time.
During these years, I recall
walking behind a team of
Clydesdales which pulled a
single -furrow plow. With reins
tight around my back and
hands firmly gripping the
handles, this ploughman
plodded back and forth across
more than one 20 -acre field.
The rhythmical pace of the
work under the glaring sun was
broken only when plow met
stone.
However, as noon
approached, I interrupted the
monotony regularly by
stopping and standing in the
freshly -turned furrow to face
north. (Farmers always know
their directions!) When, after
several hopeful sights my
shadow finally lined up due
north, I knew it was lunch
time. (I suspect the horses
knew too!) An ornate sundial found in the Kortwright Centre,
In effect, this human sundial north of Toronto, employs a concave dial.
had indicated the time, if somewhat plain or ornate. Commonly, dials are
inaccurately. Fortunately, mother flat and mounted horizontally,
never complained if I was 10 minutes however, there are vertical as well as
early or late for a hearty lunch. Or concave ones. (Anybody can
was it called "dinner" in those days? construct a basic sundial with
Sundials, simple devices for information readily obtained at a
telling time by the sun, mark both the library.)
hour and the passage of time. The nterestingly, in contrast to our
most common design consists of a fast-moving and increasingly
pointer or gnomon mounted at an noisy society, sundials are
angle above a scale marked off in stationary and silent. They
hours. A reading from one of these possess no moving parts, require
devices approximates standard time. no maintenance and don't need
Sundials can be large or small, batteries. Although they can't clock
24 THE RURAL VOICE
just
nanoseconds on the
information superhighway,
they do command respect if not
for their accuracy, for their
long and interesting history.
Sundials, the oldest of
scientific instruments, have
been largely unmodified by
time. They date back to
antiquity as confirmed by the
discovery of an Egyptian
sundial in a 15th century BC
burial place. More accurate
ones were constructed by the
Greeks as early as the sixth
century BC. Finally, with the
aid of trigonometry, 10th
century Arabs devised the
modern sundial. •
Before watches and
clocks appeared in the
15th century AD, whole
communities depended
on the sundial for
timekeeping. Commonly, the
town's timepiece was located
on the south wall of the local
church. Pastors relied on it not
only to get their flocks to
church on time, but alluded to
it in sermons which moralized
on the brevity of life.
Inscriptions found on early sundials
reflect this sentiment.
"Shadows we are and like
shadows we depart," and "The time
thou killest will in time kill thee."
With the advent of mechanical
clocks, the sundial's usefulness
declined, but not before it was used
to correct the error -prone new clocks
of the 15th century. One inscription
on an early dial implies its
superiority over mechanical
timepieces: