Sundials–Une Promenade Parisienne (A Math Walk in Paris)

Heine, George

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-64551-3_14

George Heine⁵

Part of the book series: Proceedings of the Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of Mathematics/La Société Canadienne d’Histoire et de Philosophie des Mathématiques ((PCSHPM))

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Abstract

Sundials are among the many sites in Paris relevant to the history of mathematics. We describe a few of these sites and provide a method for estimating the accuracy of historic calendrical sundials.

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Notes

1.
There is a French colloquialism chercher le midi a quatorze heures, “to look for the south at 2 pm,” meaning to complicate the issue, to look for a problem where there is none, to spend time and energy in a pointless endeavor.
2.
See (Hillairet 1993, Vol. 2, p. 183), for a history of the street, and p. 188 for a history of this plaque. Also see (Lalos 2010) for further information.
3.
The pyramid is not aligned with the cardinal directions; the south side actually faces south-southwest. However, the sun at noon shines most directly on the south side.
4.
These figures were computed using Simon Newcomb’s formula (see Various authors (2017)), considered very approximate today, but adequate for our purpose.
5.
This appears to be the design of the sundial on the Hotel des Invalides. It is not the design of the sundial on the Louvre pyramid, or in the Eglise de Saint-Sulpice, but similar arguments could be constructed for these.
6.
Metric measures are cited only to give the modern reader an idea of the scale of error; the meter, of course, was not yet invented in 1675.

References

Hillairet J (1993) Connaissance du Vieux Paris. In three volumes, bound together. Editions Payor et Rivages, Bd Saint-Germain, 75006, Paris.
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Lalos M (2010) Site de Cadrans Solaires. http://michel.lalos.free.fr/cadrans_solaires; Cited 23 Apr 2017.
Various authors, 2017. Axial Tilt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Axial_tilt; Cited 15 Jan 2017.

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Independent Scholar, Pueblo, CO, USA
George Heine

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George Heine
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Correspondence to George Heine .

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Mathematical, Information and Computer Sciences, Point Loma Nazarene University, San Diego, California, USA
Maria Zack
Department of Philosophy, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Dirk Schlimm

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Heine, G. (2017). Sundials–Une Promenade Parisienne (A Math Walk in Paris). In: Zack, M., Schlimm, D. (eds) Research in History and Philosophy of Mathematics. CSHPM 2016. Proceedings of the Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of Mathematics/La Société Canadienne d’Histoire et de Philosophie des Mathématiques. Birkhäuser, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64551-3_14

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64551-3_14
Published: 19 December 2017
Publisher Name: Birkhäuser, Cham
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-64092-1
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-64551-3
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