From Sundial to Jewelry

The sundial was humanity’s first technology for marking the passage of time. Sundials also provide aesthetic and even spiritual nourishment.  Shepherds Watch marries beauty and practicality in the form of working sundial jewelry and garden sundials.

The Coming of the Train

In earlier days, because of the earth's rotation, the town 20 or 30 miles to the east or west of you would have its clock set slightly differently. This was of little consequence to the residents who might never in their lives venture to any of their neighboring towns. Why would it matter if their clocks were five or ten minutes different?

By the late 19th Century, however, time discrepancies began to matter. The reason? The railroads. They demanded schedules. Schedules demanded times; but whose time? Along a hundred mile stretch there might be 6 different cities with 6 different town clocks each different from the other. Passengers needed to know what time the train would depart and when it would reach its destination. Railroaders needed to know when to send the next train in order to avoid serious accidents. In 1884, a conference was held and an agreement was reached to divide the USA into 4 zones each 15 degrees wide - Eastern, Central, Mountain and Pacific. All stations in the zone would carry the same time. In fact, train time, which was kept quite strictly by the railroads, became the standard by which cities and citizens set their clocks. The train whistle became the signal for setting clocks, and sundials now began to steadily disappear from almost everywhere except the garden -- and a few isolated spots on the planet, like Tibet.

The Middle Ages and the Renaissance

During the Middle Ages, people used sundials, sometimes small pocket-sized ones. But clocks were invented at the beginning of the Renaissance and then steadily developed over the years. Clocks were more of a curiosity at first; most people still used their sundials or estimated the time by the height of the sun in the sky. In 1777, when the French general Lafayette wanted to express his respect and admiration for his ally and friend General George Washington during the American revolution, he chose a silver Explorer dial as his gift. By the 18th century, clocks and watches began to supersede sundials. However, they were often unreliable and sundials often continued to be depended upon for an accurate reading.

The Greeks and Romans

The Greeks and Romans also used sundials extensively. The indicator on the sundial that casts the shadow is still known by the Greek word "gnomon," which means pointer. The use of towers and obelisks as gnomons to cast shadows indicating the hours of the day was very evident in ancient Greece and Rome. Sundials were found in houses, tombs, temples, baths and other public places. Not everyone was happy about the prevalence of sundials in ancient Greece. Writing survives in which authors complain about the intrusion into the natural flow of life by these new and demanding gadgets.

The Ancient World

The real history of sundials begins with the Egyptians, for whom the sun was central to life itself. It’s not surprising that the same civilization that invented the solar calendar would also give us the sundial. Cities and trade had been firmly established, so the need for more precision in telling time had arrived. A piece of a sundial that calibrated the location of the gnomon’s shadow is dated to about 1500 B.C., during the reign of Thutmose III. In order to differentiate between the morning hours and afternoon hours, the position of this T-shaped sundial had to be reversed 180 degrees at noon. A big step in sundial design was taken when the first round sundials that more closely resemble ours appeared in Egypt in about 1300 B.C.

The Babylonians, who were renowned astronomers, built and used sundials soon after the Egyptians, so the sundial of Ahaz may have been of either Egyptian or Babylonian design. Their treatises on sundials were the definitive statements on the subject for over a millennium, right up until the Christian era. The sundial of Ahaz is mentioned in the Old Testament (Isaiah 38:8) and dates from around 730 B.C. This is the oldest known written reference to a sundial.