CHAPTER VI

PORTABLE DIAL?
And then he drew a dial from his poke And looking on it with lack-lustre eyes Says very wisely, ' It is ten o'clock.' "
— As You Like It, ACT II, Sc. vii, WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE.
Y SHAKESPEARE'S day
many pocket-dials were in use in Europe ; the ring-dial and shepherd's-dial were common ; the compass-dial less so. The name poke-dial, given to them in old poems and plays, brings a pleasant study of the words poke, pouchy pocket^ purse. The Latin words portarium and solarium are also employed for these pocket- dials. Other references are made in the pages of Shakespeare to pocket-dials, among them the shep- herd's-dial, as in 3 Henry VI.
" Oh God, methinks it were a happy life To be no better than a homely swain, To sit upon a hill as I do now, To carve out dials quaintly point by point; Thereby to see the minutes how they run,
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Portable Sun-dials 121
How many make the hour full complete, How many hours bring about the day, How many days will finish up the year, How many years a mortal man may live."
Let me tell the history of this poke-dial, and give rules for making it, so that, as do still the shepherds in the Pyrenees, any one may " carve it out quaintly point by point." A shepherd at Beam made this philosophical answer last summer to an American who jested with him over the antiquated timepiece he was carving : " No human being can certainly dare to know the time of the day as well as the sun, since without him there would be no time; so we go directly to the sun when we wish to know what time it is."
This dial is known by many names old and new : chilindre, cylinder, calendar, kalendar, column-dial, pillar-dial, shepherd's-dial, Pyrenean dial. Treatises on these chilindres are extant which were written in the thirteenth century.
Warton gives as a note to Lydgate : " Kalendar, Chilindre, cylinder, a kind of pocket sun-dial." Chaucer says in his Sbipmans Ta/e, "By my chil- indre it is prime of daye," which was the end of the first hour after sunrise.
These cylinders are small columns of ivory or wood having at the top a kind of stopper or lid with a ring at the top, and with a gnomon hinged upon the side of the stopper. The cylinder is divided into month spaces on the circumference.
When in use, the stopper was taken out and the gnomon turned around, so it hung over the desired
122 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday
month space or line. Then the dial was hung up on the ring, so it hung exactly vertical with the pointer extended toward the sun. It could be set on a horizontal plane, but a slight deviation so affected it that it was far better to hang it up. The
Drawing in 14th Century Mss. of a Chilindre.
shadow fell on the curved hour lines and showed the time. Homan in his Vulgaria gave in 1520 a very terse description of these dials, calling them " in- struments like a hanging pillar with a tunge hanging out to know ye tyme of day."
On this page is given a drawing from a four-
Portable Sun-dials
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teenth century treatise on the Chilindre which is now preserved in the Arundel Mss. It is called in it the " travellers'-dial " ; full and precise directions are given, as for the wood to be used, which should be " very solid, imporous, equal, and without knots."
Two Boxwood and One Ivory Shepherd's-dials.
The markings and lines are carefully shown with exact directions for making them. The gnomon is called in this treatise a style or indicator, and could be made of copper, of silver with a bit of lead melted on it ; it worked on a pin fastened in the lid.
124 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday
In the museum at Naples is the oldest portable dial known, and it is an adaptation of the chilindre. It was found at the excavations made in Hercula- neum in 1759. It is of bronze shaped like a ham,
t
. •.
--
Two Boxwood Pillar-dials.
and on the flat sides are the lines and letters that prove it to be a sun-dial. Its date must be before A.D. 79. It was to be suspended by a ring and had a tail-piece which must have been the gnomon.
Portable Sun-dials 125
A most interesting type of cylinder-dials is known in India, where the dials are set in staves 4^ to 5^ feet long, which pilgrims carry with them to Benares. These are called Ashadah^ the name of the month when these pilgrimages are usually made, — it is the latter half of June and first half of July. These pil- grim staves are eight-sided, carved with numerals to show the half hours from sunrise to sunset.
On page 123 is given an interesting group of chilindres, owned by Mr. Evans. Number i is a shepherd's-dial, of boxwood, 3^ inches high, |- of an inch in diameter. The figures and month initials were stamped on it, and then filled in with some red pigment. This was bought in 1899 at Argeles, near Lourdes, where these dials are still sold for use. Number 2 is a wooden column-dial 5 inches high, covered with printed paper varnished. Made for latitude 49° by Henry Robert, horologer au Palais Royal, N° /d/, Paris. Its probable date is 1800. Number 3 is a column-dial of ivory 4^ inches high; marked J. Le Tellier A^ieppe. Date about 1780. On page 124 are shown a column-dial 4^ inches high, |- inch diameter, probably German ; made about 1650; also a shorter boxwood pillar-dial, which once belonged to Mr. Lewis's great-grandfather, Lewis Evans, F.R.S., and which may have been made by him. Its date is about 1780; it is 3^ inches high, |- of an inch in diameter.
I give here on pages 126 and 127 two plates on the making of a cylinder-dial from Ferguson's Mechani- cal Lectures on Dialling. These plates show how to construct a cylinder-dial for the latitude of London.
126 Sun-dials and Roses of Yesterday
Plate I, on this page, was 8 inches long and y-J- inches deep, and was to be pasted around a cylin- der 6.60 inches long below the movable top, and 2.24 inches in diameter. The cylinder should be hol- low to hold the style when not in use ; the style when fixed must be at an exact right angle to the cylinder, and be placed at top of the line AB of the Plate I,