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Mike Shaw


This review covers "A Study of Altitude Dials" by Mike Cowham (BSS Monograph No 4). It praises the monograph's comprehensive overview of altitude dials, including their construction, accuracy, and various types like pillar, chalice, and quadrant dials. The book also provides detailed construction guides, diagrams, and a CD-Rom with templates for readers to make their own dials.
How Sundials Work, Book Reviews, Sundial Design & Layout, DIY Sundial Projects

Compares an early 20th-century postcard of a Pilkington & Gibbs heliochronometer at Thornton Manor with a modern photograph. It notes the dial's original purchase by Lord Leverhulme, its continued presence on its pedestal, and the replacement of its glass dome with a chemistry bell jar.
Dials: Heliochronometer, Historical Dials

This report details the author's trip to the North American Sundial Society (NASS) conference in Chicago, August 2005. It covers tourist activities in the city, workshops held, the formal registration, meeting other sundial enthusiasts, and the bus tour to see local sundials, including the DuPage County Veterans’ Memorial Dial and the Henry Moore sundial.
The BSS and Members

Mike Shaw details his innovative two-component sundial system, comprising an equatorial collector in the garden and a remote display unit indoors, linked by fibre optics. Designed to overcome the need to go outside to read time and simplify the display, the article describes its construction, addressing material challenges and light-gathering techniques.
DIY Sundial Projects, Dials: Unusual

This review discusses two papers on conical sundials, a less familiar type compared to the hemicyclium. It focuses on a conical dial found at Abu Mina, Egypt, dating from the 1st to 3rd century A.D., analyzing its construction, accuracy, and challenging previous interpretations of its markings.
Book Reviews, Sundial Design & Layout, Historical Dials, Dials: Scaphe

This review covers two issues of *Compendium*, the NASS journal. It highlights articles on a 'Witch's Sundial', various sundial designs (conical gnomon, Ptolemaic coordinates, cycloid gnomon, split analemma), and 'Sightings' features on notable dials, concluding with a report on the NASS Fourth Annual Conference.
Dials: Equatorial, Book Reviews, Sundial Design & Layout, Equation of Time

This review covers two issues of NASS's *Compendium* (Vol.6 No.1 and No.2). It highlights articles on a stone cube dial from Ross-on-Wye, the Capuchin and Apian dials, and a monolith memorial sundial in Charleston, S.C. The second issue features horizontal garden dials and an ingenious 'sundot polar dial' design for a hollow cylinder. It also notes reader queries on wood types for sundials and finding wall declination.
Book Reviews

Describes the Poulton Hall dial on the Wirral peninsula: setting, design features and inscriptions, with observations on the equation of time using the pre-Gregorian calendar, an the lack of a noon gap.
Dials: Horizontal, Historical Dials

This section reviews three offprints: Dr. Wall's study of Anglo-Saxon sundials in Ryedale, detailing octaval day divisions; Finn Magnusen's monograph on ancient Scandinavian time divisions and 'daymarks'; and Dr. Milutin Tadic's paper on old sundials in Serbian lands, covering Roman, medieval, and 19th-century examples, noting their scarcity due to Turkish rule.
Book Reviews, Historical Dials

This article reviews *Compendium*, the journal of NASS, featuring J.M. Bores' new conical sundial design, measuring Babylonian and Italian hours, and an article by Robert L. Kellogg on Bede's cosmological and geographical works, including his observations on day-length variations. It also mentions a regular "Sightings" feature on notable dials.
Book Reviews, Dials: Unusual, Sundial Design & Layout