kirchersociety.org

Though the time piece at left appears to resemble a standard digital clock, it is in fact entirely passive. There are no moving parts. There is no electricity. An ingenious masking system translates the angle of the sun into digits.

The theory behind the digital sundial was first proposed in a 1987 book on fractal geometry by Kenneth Falconer. A 1991 Scientific American article encouraged three German inventors to try to construct a working prototype of this hypothetical timekeeper. In 1998, the first functional digital sundial was installed in the Genk, Belgium Sundial Park.

The HinesLab sells blueprints for a large digital sundial. Consumer models are manufactured by Digital Sundial International.

* Previously in the Proceedings: The World’s Largest Sundial, Kircher’s Sunflower Clock, Kircher’s Magnetic Clock, Su Song’s Water Clock, The Astronomical Clock of Besançon, Mirrors Over Manhattan, Clock of the Long Now, The 28-Hour Day

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 7th, 2007 at 12:19 pm and is filed under optics, time. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.