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Mike Knee
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Contact: mike.knee@iee.org

The Time and Date Sundial

Kit available from just £3.00 (UK)

Print and post the attached order form or order online

See a photograph of a completed sundial

The Time and Date Sundial featured in the UK national Sunday newspaper "The Mail on Sunday" on 14 March 2004 and in the USA's "Miami Herald" on 17 March 2004. Read the article.

The Time and Date Sundial is a kit for a new kind of sundial that sits on a sunny windowsill and can tell you the time and the date. Most sundials cast the shadow of a line, the top edge of a gnomon, from which the time can be read off on a scale. The Time and Date Sundial casts the shadow of a sharp point - the tip of a pen or pencil - onto a special two-dimensional scale in the shape of an inverted cone, to give a reading of the time and the date. This is possible because the height of the Sun's path across the sky changes throughout the year, just as the position in its path changes through the day

The kit consists of
- the sundial scale itself, an intricate and accurate pattern printed in colour on good-quality paper, customised to your location
- full instructions for the simple, five-minute task of turning the sheet into a working sundial
- two further sheets for those who prefer simplified scales - a blue sundial for January-July and a red one for July-December
- background information about sundials and the Equation of Time

If made and set up carefully, the Time and Date Sundial will tell the time to an accuracy of about three minutes and the date (at least in spring and autumn) to an accuracy of about two days. It automatically corrects for the Equation of Time, the variations in the lengths of days which make ordinary sundials fast or slow by up to a quarter of an hour each way.

Time and Date Sundial kits for use near their "home town" of Petersfield, UK are available for just £3.00 + p&p. They can be customised for other places for £5.00 for the first one and £4.00 for copies. Time and Date Sundials have raised hundreds of pounds for charity, most recently the BBC Children in Need Appeal, but at present I am selling them to cover my costs.

Please print and post the attached order form, e-mail me for one: mike@trikeshed.com or order online

Thanks to the British Sundial Society for linking to this page.

Mike Knee, Petersfield, UK

Page last updated 2009 May 1 by Mike Knee

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