Dial

“ To rectify the dial (using the old expression, which means to prepare the dial for an observation) ,—open the small door, by turning it about its hinge, till it stands well out in front. Next, set the thread in the line FG opposite the day of the month, and stretching it over the point A, slide the bead P along till it exactly coincides with A.
To find the hour of the day,—hold the dial in a vertical position in such a way that its plane may pass through the sun. ”

“ The levelling will be done with a spirit-level, and the orientation will be best effected either in the forenoon or in the afternoon, by turning the dial plate till the time given by the shadow (making the one minute correction mentioned above) agrees with a good watch whose error on solar time is known. It is, however, important to bear in mind that a dial, so built up beforehand, will have the angle at the base equal to the latitude of some selected place, such as London, and the hour-lines will be drawn in directions calculated for the same latitude. ”

“ Our imaginary sphere being, as before supposed, constructed with its centre at the centre of the dial, and all the hour-circles traced upon it, the intersection of these hour-circles with the plane of the dial will determine the hour-lines just as in the previous cases; but the triangles will no longer be right-angled, and the simplicity of the calculation will be lost, the chances of error being greatly increased by the difficulty of drawing the dial plane in its true position on the sphere, since that true position will have to be found from observations which can be only roughly performed. ”

“ It will rise at 6 o’clock, and at noon have an altitude of 36°,—that is, the portable dial will indicate an average change of one-tenth of a degree in each minute, or two and a half times slower than the fixed dial. The vertical motion of the sun increases, however, nearer the horizon, but even there it will be only one-eighth of a degree each minute, or half the rate of the fixed dial, which goes on at nearly the same speed throughout the day. ”

“ ANCIENT DIAL. For the Table Book.
The dial in use among the ancient Jews differed from that in use among us. Theirs was a kind of stairs; the time of the day was distinguished, not by lines, but by steps or degrees; the shade of the sun every hour moved forward to a new degree. On the dial of Ahaz, the sun went back (magnoloth) degrees or steps, not lines.—Isai. xxxviii. 8. P.
PETER HERVE. To the Editor.
Sir,—Having had the happiness and honour of holding correspondence with that most benevolent man, Mr. ”

“ The dial shown on the left of Fig. 24 was designed by me for a public clock and can be read twice as far away as the usual dial. Just why we should make the worst dials and hands for public clocks in the United States is more than I can find out, for there is no possible excuse, since the “spade and pointer” hands have been known for generations. Figure 45 is offered as a properly designed dial for watches and domestic clocks, having flat-faced Gothic figures of moderate height, leaving a clear center in the dial, and the heavy “spade” hour hand reaching only to the inner edges of the figures. ”

“ So many ancient dials are to-day continually changing hands and being placed in new surroundings, that although cognisant of the fact that it would be far more interesting to illustrate my work with sketches showing the dial in its original position, yet in the majority of cases I have proved this to be impossible. ”

“ Dial, dī′al, n. an instrument for showing the time of day by the sun's shadow: a timepiece: the face of a watch or clock: a circular plate on which a movable index shows the degree of pressure, &c.—v.t. to measure, as with a dial.—ns. Dī′alist, a maker of dials: one skilled in dialling; Dī′alling, the art of constructing dials: the science which explains the measuring of time by the sun-dial: surveying by help of a compass with sights, such as is called a 'miner's dial;' Dīal-plate. [M. E. dial—Low L. dialis, daily—L. dies, a day.]
Dialect, dī′a-lekt, n. ”

“ People have a pattern dial painted; and if the figures are not as long as one-third of the radius, and therefore occupying, with the minutes, about two-thirds of the area of the dial, they fancy they are not large enough to be read at a distance; whereas the fact is, the more the dial is occupied by figures, the less distinct they are, and the more difficult it is to distinguish the position of the hands, which is what people want to see, and not to read the figures, which may very well be replaced by twelve large spots.... ”

“ The central line of light which comes through the open slit will be free from this error, because it is given by light from the centre of the sun.
The card-dial deserves to be looked upon as something more than a mere toy. Its ingenuity and scientific accuracy give it an educational value which is not to be measured by the roughness of the results obtained. ”

“ Here and there the thoughts of great minds, aptly expressed to suit the dial’s power, stand out as red-letter days in a church’s calendar and proclaim by their individuality an exceptional character. But such verses are very rare, and where they exist they will generally be found on dials that have been erected by the order of the writer of the verse to mark some special occasion. ”

“ In one class of dials, namely, all the vertical ones, the XII o’clock line is simply the vertical line from the centre; it can, therefore, at once be traced on the dial face by using a fine plumb-line.
The XII o’clock line being traced, the easiest and most accurate method of tracing the other hour-lines would, at the present day when good watches are common, be by marking where the shadow of the style falls when 1, 2, 3, &c., hours have elapsed since noon, and the next morning by the same means the forenoon hour-lines could be traced ”

“ When placing the dial in position, care must be taken to get it perfectly level and have the style at right angles to the dial face, with its sloping side pointing to the North Pole. An ordinary compass, after allowing for the declination, will enable one to set the dial, or it may be set by placing it as near north and south as one may judge and comparing with a watch set at standard time. ”

“ DIAL and DIALLING. Dialling, sometimes called gnomonics, is a branch of applied mathematics which treats of the construction of sun-dials, that is, of those instruments, either fixed or portable, which determine the divisions of the day (Lat. dies) by the motion of the shadow of some object on which the sun’s rays fall. It must have been one of the earliest applications of a knowledge of the apparent motion of the sun; though for a long time men would probably be satisfied with the division into morning and afternoon as marked by sun-rise, sun-set and the greatest elevation. ”

“ Dialling is a science which few except experts understand now; the antiquary takes little note of it as he gazes upon the old dial plate and makes out the inscription upon it. The collector gladly buys the brass dial with its quaint lettering and division marks without even knowing where it came from, or what kind of stone column or pillar it originally capped. ”

“ To set a Sun Dial.—Dig a hole in the earth, and set it. Sun dials are, however, seldom known to thrive much. The Seven Dials in London grew up in a soil composed of old clothes, Irish, onions, Jews, and Gin; and the population is still literally celebrated for knowing what's o'clock, with occasional rectification by the police.
Directions to know the Stars.—Notice whose names are printed largest in the play-bills, and precede the largest sums in the schedule of a manager when he goes up to the Insolvent Court. ”

“ There is no necessity for going beyond the VI o’clock hour-line on each side of noon; for, in the winter months the sun sets earlier than 6 o’clock, and in the summer months it passes behind the plane of the dial before that time, and is no longer available. ”

“ See under Acoustic. — Dial telegraph, a telegraph in which letters of the alphabet and numbers or other symbols are placed upon the border of a circular dial plate at each station, the apparatus being so arranged that the needle or index of the dial at the receiving station accurately copies the movements of that at the sending station. — Electric telegraph, or Electro- magnetic telegraph, a telegraph in which an operator at one station causes words or signs to be made at another by means of a current of electricity, generated by a battery and transmitted over an intervening wire. ”

“ In the illustration about half a hundred is indicated on the “1 thousand” dial, three thousands is indicated on the next dial, two ten-thousands on the next dial, and one one-hundred-thousand on the “1 million” dial. The reading will be 123,050. The dial marked “ten feet” is called the units dial. It is used for testing the meter to discover whether it is in working order or not. Each mark represents a cubic foot and the complete circle 10 cubic feet. If the pointer moves when no gas is burning, it indicates a leak. ”

“ Sharp, of Dublin, exhibited to the British Association in 1849 a Dial, consisting of a cylinder set to the day of the month, and then elevated to the latitude. A thin plane of metal, in the direction of its axis, is then turned by a milled head below it till the shadow is a minimum, when a dial on the top shows the hours by one hand, and the minutes by another, to the precision of about three minutes. ”

“ Properly [ 159] the dial should never be less in diameter than one-tenth of the number of feet which it is distant from the ground, and in all cases where it is possible I should recommend it to be much larger than this. The dials of St Paul's and Westminster are larger than they would be under the above rule, and they are certainly not too large. As to the colour of the dials, figures, and hands, there is not much choice; dark ground and gilt figures, or white ground with black figures, or a skeleton frame with gilt figures are the chief in use. ”

“ In the apparatus which will probably be in use during the twentieth century, each subscriber will have a dial carrying on its face the names and numbers of all those with whom he is in the habit of holding communication. ”

“ The sixth dial discloses a combination of chimes which sound the quarter-hours, a choice of the tune to be played being had by turning a hand to any one of ten numbers, and a repetition of the tune is caused by pressing on a knob upon the dial.
A great many people nowadays appear to have taken a fancy to the tall clocks that are intended to stand in the corner of a room. ”

“ On each of the dials is a circular brass indicator, fastened by a little pin in its centre, so as to be turned round at pleasure. Each indicator is pierced on one side, close to the edge, with a round hole through which one number only on the dial is visible at a time, and opposite to this hole is a raised point by which the indicator can be turned as required. ”

“ When the needle reached a certain swiftness of revolution on the dial, it ceased, and the next highest dial, in thousands of years, continued the record alone, having followed the dial of the years so long as it revolved. ”

“ In Fig. 4 is shown a modern horizontal dial without the usual confusing “ornamentation,” and in Fig. 5 it is shown set up on the latitude of New York City for which it is calculated. This shows clearly why the edge FG of the style which casts the shadow must be parallel to the earth's axis and why a horizontal dial must be made for the latitude of the place where it is set up. Figure 6 is the same dial only the lines are laid out on a square dial plate, and it will give your young scientific readers a hint of how to set up a dial in the garden. ”

“ The dial of Berossus remained in use for centuries. The Arabians, as appears from the work of Albategnius, still followed the same construction about the year A.D. 900. Four of these dials have in modern times been found in Italy. One, discovered at Tivoli in 1746, is supposed to have belonged to Cicero, who, in one of his letters, says that he had sent a dial of this kind to his villa near Tusculum. ”

“ It was Charles Dickens who, in June, 1859, wrote to his daughter and signified his pleasure at receiving from the contractor for the works, the gift of a balustrade out of the old Rochester bridge; he stated that without delay he had had a dial constructed to suit the pedestal, and thus had added to his garden a fresh item of interest.
All forms of dials have received consideration—perpendicular, horizontal, pocket and ring dials; even moon dials have not been neglected. ”

“ Then if care be taken that the style point accurately to the pole, and that the noon division coincide with the meridian plane, the shadow of the style will fall on the other divisions, each at its proper time. The divisions must be marked on both sides of the dial, because the sun will shine on opposite sides in the summer and in the winter months, changing at each equinox. ”

“ In a country like ours, where there are eighty nationalities in the public schools, the telephone has a peculiar value as a part of the national digestive apparatus. It prevents the growth of dialects and helps on the process of assimilation. ”

“ The clock is constructed to mark uniform time in such wise that the length of the clock day shall be the average of all the solar days in the year. Four times a year the clock and the sun-dial agree exactly; but the sun-dial, now going a little slower, now a little faster, will be sometimes behind, sometimes before the clock—the greatest accumulated difference being about sixteen minutes for a few days in November, but on the average much less. ”