News (Ancient) 2,000-year-old Roman Sundial Have Been Found

[Bestiola]

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.
The sundial is one of less than 100 of its type that have survived, say archaeologists.

https://www.haaretz.com/archaeology/1.821742

 

[Araneus]

Funny how they seem to have almost run out of space to write the last part of his name. I wonder if that bothered him.

 

[Bestiola]

On this site there is a 3D model in case anyone would want to play with it: https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/11/ancient-rome-election-victory-sundial-archaeology/

 

[Araneus]

I'll probably just break it. You won't believe my clumsyness.

 

[Bestiola]

And speaking of sundials:

Ancient Sundial Shaped Like Ham Was Roman Pocket Watch

While excavating an ancient Roman villa buried in volcanic ash, 18th-century workers found an unusual lump of metal small enough to fit in a coffee mug. Cleaning it revealed something both historically important and hilarious: one of the world’s oldest known examples of a portable sundial, which was made in the shape of an Italian ham.
Now the “pork clock” ticks once more. Recently re-created through 3-D printing, a high-fidelity model of the sundial is helping researchers address questions about how it was used and the information it conveyed.
The model confirms, for instance, that using the whimsical timepiece required a certain amount of finesse, says Wesleyan University’s Christopher Parslow, a professor of classical studies and Roman archaeology who made the 3-D reconstruction. All the same, “it does represent a knowledge of how the sun works, and it can be used to tell time.”
The object was the pocket watch of its day. Fixed sundials were everywhere in ancient Greece and Rome, but only 25 other portable sundials from antiquity are known, says Alexander Jones, a historian of ancient science at New York University’s Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, who was not involved in Parslow’s experiments. It’s not clear exactly when the Herculaneum clock was made, but it is either the oldest or second oldest surviving portable sundial, Jones says.

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/01/ancient-roman-sundial-pork-clock-pompeii-archaeology-science/

 

[Bestiola]

I'll probably just break it. You won't believe my clumsyness.

 

[Hawkwood]

I've been meaning to build a 16th century diptych made of card, with the help of a free website. I don't understand the principles behind sundials but according to this site I just need a stanley blade, a printer and a few hours to familiarize myself with the bare basics of trigonometry.