Sasch Stephens recalled seeing and being profoundly impressed long ago by a large sculpture in California by Roger Berry, a well known California artist, using solstice disks.
Roger Berry's "Duplex Cone" in Oakland CA
A look at the large body of Roger Berry's art shows that he uses accurately aligned solstice cones and other rod methods to make art that subtly uses the sun's path. Of course, the cones and rods in his art are placed at angles corresponding to the latitude of their sites in California. The Silver Creek Solstice Dial is made for the specific latitude and longitude of its location in Alger. Many sundials can be tilted to function in different latitudes from those for which they were originally designed, but the day-night division of the solstice cones, as implied by the above ground portion of Berry's Duplex Cone or the open and solid division of the cones on the SCSD lock the latitude of this dial The rotation of the equinox disk on the SCSD also locks it to the longitude of the Alger park.
At the First Shadow Celebration, Sasch reminded me of a working foam core board mockup of a sundial for the blind that I had displayed at the 2006 NASS convention in Vancouver BC. It uses the day portion of the same solstice cones with baffles put in on hour lines.
Proposed Sundial for the Blind
Light amplified by reflections in tunnels
Braille numbers were to be engraved on the equatorial disk and time read by centering fingers on the most heat. A durable version of this dial was never built. Our local cones still needed to see the sun.
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