The Longitude Dial Time and Elegance.

"My original goal in this," he said in response to my surprise, "was to produce an accurate timepiece with no moving parts—an original creation that combined art and science, drawing from the long traditions of both in its design, and incorporating the finest craftsmanship and latest technology in its construction."
William Andrewes

This is a gorgeous piece of engineering and craftsmanship, I find it amazingly beautiful. It is as simple as a sundial and yet requires laser engraving of a particular type of stone to get it just right. It also embodied a man's passion like nothing else and it shows! This is one of those thing were form and function didn't follow one another but made love.

"A clock or watch may keep time, but only a sundial can find time—a distinctly different function—by deriving the hour from the relative positions of the Earth and Sun."

He is a time geek, I knew that there is a difference between what we use for time keeping and what the Earth's actual time differed slightly, the need for leap seconds and the like. But this takes it to a whole new level.

This time finder combines a sundial and a projection map, into a something more then just a sundial. It is designed around it being in a certain place on this planet and it will work best only there and maybe the antipode, but I am not sure about that.

I like sundials. I remember walking into one in Germany, I say walking into since it was make up of the church spire and the adjoining courtyard with the hours laid out on the surrounding buildings. That was a marvelous blending of form and function.

We have a sundial for our garden that says "Time started in a garden."

This would make a fabulous centerpiece to a formal garden. This calls out for not just a garden but a house worthy of it. A solid house that would last for generations make not of sticks or bricks but of great blocks of stone with a slate roof. This timepiece is a call for timelessness in our lives.

Thanks to Boing, Boing