Abstract
Drawing upon the exquisite collection of sundials and time-finding instruments at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago—currently being catalogued by the author—this essay offers examples of sundials made of silver, gilt brass, ivory, wood, and stone between 1500 and 1900. They were designed to be portable or fixed, pocket-sized, or monumental, but all did more than tell the time. By critically examining them, we can see the influence of the cultures in which they were made and used. These material objects tell stories of race, empire, labor, religion, fashion, and politics. And by so doing, the sundials exhibit the relationship of time in these concerns.
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Notes
- 1.
This paper draws upon the extraordinary collection of more than 400 sundials and time-finding instruments at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. The author has been documenting the collection, and a catalogue is forthcoming (Schechner 2017). Particular instruments will be cited using the museum’s accession numbers preceded by AP. Please consult Schechner (2017) for additional documentation.
- 2.
Chronograms are sentences or phrases in which specific letters are interpreted as Roman numerals, which stand for a particular date when pulled out of the sentence and rearranged.
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Schechner, S.J. (2017). These Are Not Your Mother’s Sundials: Or, Time and Astronomy’s Authority. In: Arias, E., Combrinck, L., Gabor, P., Hohenkerk, C., Seidelmann, P. (eds) The Science of Time 2016. Astrophysics and Space Science Proceedings, vol 50. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59909-0_8
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