Posted on 11/08/2017 4:04:43 PM PST by mairdie
One day around 2,000 years ago, a Roman named Marcus Novius Tubula ordered an elaborate sundial, University of Cambridge researchers report after finding it intact two millennia later during excavation in the Roman town of Interamna Lirenas, near Monte Cassino, in Italy.
Carved in limestone and 54 centimeters in width, the sundial's concave face was engraved with 11 hour lines intersecting three day curves. Thus the device could give indicate the season: the winter solstice, equinox and summer solstice, the archaeologists say. Its gnomon (pointer) was mostly gone, but a bit of it survived under lead fixing.
(Excerpt) Read more at haaretz.com ...
At my first fulltime job at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago, I got to polish gold and silver antique astrolabes, as well as inventory the earliest astronomy books. The collection included what might have been the first alarm clock - made up of a sundial, magnifying glass, and a small cannon.
TEMPVS FVGIT
Cool! I worked on the collections database that was used to track the collection there. This was back in the 90s.
Tempus neminem manet
That is WILD! I worked there in 1967.
They didn’t know ALL CAPS are shouting?
Fascinating to think of the level of intelligence of so many in Ancient Rome and before. I got in a discussion with this guy in Los Altos Ca a few years ago. He is an avowed atheist and has great disdain for Christians. Anyway, I stated that people living 2000 years ago were just as intelligent as those today. He scoffed at the notion. They actually were just as intelligent but lacked printing presses necessary to make education universal or to pass on accumulated knowledge.
or ‘takes a licking, keeps on, um, ticking’
Easy to learn to read & write, easy to mass produce.
I want a sundial like that. 8>)
The Basilica, largest Catholic Church in the world built some 500 years ago. The stunning architecture, the craftsmanship, the genius to build it without much in the way of mechanical equipment.
The one with the cannon that is.
Like your Indian quote, but actually it is worse than this.
They (gov’t) take one hour away 7 months(Spring) of the year and add one hour 5 months(Fall) of the year.
If they only would balance the year, 6 months spring forward and 6 months fall back. No, we actually lose one hour for approximately one month, 30 hours, roughly a loss of 1.4 days a year. We lose this time every single year.
I want a gold astrolabe! I settle for my little paper turnie thing that I hold over my head.
One hopes not to wake up with a small hole in one’s head. You CAN make one, of course. Very, very carefully.
Jimmy Sherman could fix it. Over on 85th and Columbus.
I thought Fred Flintstone had the first alarm clock.
Never watched the show, but the theme is an ear worm for sure.
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