Portable vertical sundial

INTRODUCTION
- Man and the stars
SECTION I
- The dawn of astronomy: Mesopotamia, Egypt and the Biblical Cosmos
SECTION II
- The cosmos becomes a sphere
SECTION III
- The geometry of the cosmos
SECTION IV
- The skies of Islam
SECTION V
- Evangelisation of the cosmos
SECTION VI
- The Renaissance of Astronomy
SECTION VII
- Galileo: the cosmos through the telescope
SECTION VIII
- From Galileo to Newton

Plate with signs of the zodiac and planets

Zoom

Portable vertical sundial, ca. 250 A.D.
Oxford, Museum of the History of Science, inv. 51358

Portable sundial calibrated for a variety of latitudes. The curved piece rotating above the smaller disc is a combination between an hour-scale and a gnomon, to indicate the date. Suspended in the vertical plane, it marked the hour. The back of the larger disc carries the latitudes of 30 provinces in the Roman Empire.