Seattle Sundials

one weekend in october the evergreen tandem club had a public group ride we participated in. turns out amy and thyce (sp?) were also on the ride.

this was about a 20 mile loop ride through the city of seattle, visiting 10 sundials. we had the opera that night and knew we might have to bail early if we as a group tended to dwadle at any of the stops. and we only made it to the 8th sundial. on top of that the camera batts died at the 6th one! oh well. we might try to find the last couple on our own - and there are supposed to be about 2 dozen total in this city, so why not add those as well?

here's a brief rundown that the ride leader had put together for us.

#1: gasworks park (on top of large kite hill)
the 28' analemmatic dial was built in 1979 by c. Greening and K. Lazare. The sundial is sculptural and shows each sign of the zodiac. it is from colored concrete with inlaid objects scattered throughout, including a bronze bear claw, ceramic crab, pottery, glass and shells. the main features are bronze and the standing position (the person looking at the sundial is the gnomon) depends on the date. there are 3 bronze footprints in the design: greening's, the anonymous donor's, and the donor's dog.

#2: UW campus (physics/astronomy building)
built in 1994 by woody sullivan, larry stark and mihaly turbucz, the large sundial is painted bronze aluminum and measures 20'x30'. the gnomon (the part that casts the shadow) extends 6.9' from the building. this sundial is accurate to .5 minutes, and to be maintenance free for 50 years. this sundial's motto is "what you seek is but a shadow". the numbers on the bottom represent summer hours while numbers on the top represent winter hours (notice daylight saving time!). the figure-8 curve are called the analemma, and plots the location of each day throughout the year. we were lucky to have prof. woody sullivan talk to us about this sundial and explain how it works.

#3: Burke-Gilman trail (near sandpoint way & NE52nd)
located in a small amiptheatre in a playground this is a horizontal sundial with a vertical conical gnomon. it is tiled concrete designed by robert shimbo and completed in 1987. there is about 2-3 inches of hte top of the gnomon missing. the colored tiles represent the different seasons.

#4: UW campus (drumheller fountain (frosh pond) just off red square)
A small sundial fastened to a 30" chunk of stone. it is a traditional horizontal dial with a triangular wedge for the gnomon. it is one of the older sundials in the city, being a gift from the class of 1912. weathered copper alloy has roman numerals.

#5: cowen park (in play area near ravenna & cowen)
a horizontal sundial consists of a large stainless steel sculpture and built in 1999 as part of the seattle neighborhood matching fund. designed by randy nussbaum and built by the community all parts came from boeing surplus. the 15' gnomon is set at the site to be parallel to the earth's axis. it is also centered on a circular slab of concrete and the hour numbers run along the perimeter. the marker for the winter solstice is actually off the sundial to the north a few yards. this sundial is unusual in that the NSEW markers are based on magnetic north, and the the sundial itself and hour markers are based on true north.

#6: University Prep Academy (main entrance)
a 10' tall variation on the traditional portable shepherd's or pillar sundial in which a rotatable gnomon is moved so as to cast a vertical shadow on a cylinder. This one was fabricated by charles wiemeyer and peggy dow, ray monnat and woody sullivan. it was built in 2002 a a gift from the parent council to the students. the motto "who's turning". there is a handle at the base of the cylinder for the user to turn the cylinder until the gnomon's shadow is vertical. shepherd's sundials are usually hollow to ease transportation. the puma on the back is the school's mascot.(this is where the camera died.)

#7: olympic view elementary (south wall of school and another painted on the asphalt of neighboring playground)
there's a large vertical dial on the south wall. woody sullivan headed a group of teachers and students in grades 4-5 to design this sundial. it was installed in 1999 by sullivan, PSE, and school volunteers. the gnomon is topped by the school mascot, an eagle. the children painted tiles and these were placed withing the calendar of the sundial on their birthdays as the gnomon passes across the dial.
the 2nd is an analemmatic dial. you stand on the date and become the gnomon.

#8: north seattle community college (just east of cafeteria)
i think this was my favorite as far as artistic visuals.
this sundial is an equatorial bow dial, meaning it's a dial aligned with the earth's equator and poles. the gnomon is a bar parallel to the celestial axis. perpendicular is a 2nd semicircular bow with hour markings and aligned parallel to the plane of the equator. the bar rotates so a user can align the slot in the bar to be aligned with the sun. it was completed in 1990 by daryl smith and is mounted on a granite plinth. it is accurate to 1 minute. this dial is a memorial to george lewis, who was founder of the college's horology dept. (the study of time). this type of bow dial, built at a width of 6' of temperature-invariant steel invar was used to keep the trains running on time in france before WW1.

a little more info given to us by the ride-leader:
sundials have long and rich history, extending back to the 2nd millenium BC in egypt. until reliable watches and clocks became common in the 19th century, any educated person was well-versed in their principles of operations and construction. although their purpose was practical, they were also often designed with strong aesthetics and with moral principles in mind. today we have superior ways of keeping time to split-second accuracy, but the allure of the sundial has not faded. it is still the most apposite and striking means of indicating time.
a will-designed sundial has many effects on viewers. perhaps the most profound are those of a philosophical nature, in which this device that records time ironically engages the viewer in a timeless manner.
although the principles of a sundial are universal, its design is completely specific to a site and intimately conjoins the viewer, the locale, and the heavens. although a sundial is stationary (no moving parts) it records fleeting time. although the dial is passive in character, it speaks strongly and leads to contemplation - of hte sun, the cosmos, and our place in it, of time and its passing, of history and mortality.
we can admire them for their beauty and craftsmanship and historical value, even if it's raining. we can be fascinated by their technical details and read the time and many other parameters to high accuracy. a well-designed sundial displays for the viewer a marvellous mapping of positions and events on the celestial sphere, based on the relationships between the site, the dial surface, and the ever-changing path of the sun. it affords the student of the cosmos an experience of the passage of the days and of the seasons that is direct, not learned from pages of a text.



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