Credit: ©The Royal Society
    Image number: RS.18016

    Pyramid dial

    Date
    1690
    Creator
    Robert White (1645 - 1703, British) , Engraver
    Object type
    Library reference
    48603
    Material
    Technique
    Dimensions
    height (page): 290mm
    width (page): 180mm
    Subject
    Content object
    Description
    A pyramidal dial, the centrepiece of King Charles II’s Garden in Whitehall in 1669. The dial is mounted on a pedestal and consists of six tiered levels. Decorative iron branches project from each level, each supporting a different glass dial.

    Plate 31 from William Leybourn’s Dialling: plain, concave, convex, projective, reflective, refractive… (Black Swan, Pater-Noster-Row, 1690)

    Written in the associated description: ‘each of them [branches] carrying a Glass Bowl […] on which Bowl are also Dials described, but different from the former, shewing the hour according to the several ways of counting the Hours. These Bowls are painted on the inside with thick Colour to keep out the Light, except a little place which is left clear, like a Star, for the Sun Beams, to pass thorow and shew the Hour’

    William Leybourn (1626-1716) British mathematician and land surveyor was not a Fellow of the Royal Society.
    Associated place
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       > Europe
          > United Kingdom
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