Our sundial of the month is the Humbekk sundial. Created in 2013, this fascinating structure deviates from more conventional sundial designs, being a vertical cylindrical column made of opal glass, standing 3.6 metres high, and 1.8 metres wide. This is similar in concept to the Beer Glass Sundial we featured on social media a short while ago.
It was built to celebrate 1,000 years of the village of Humbekk, as well as to commemorate professor William Lepage, who was born in Humbekk and wrote a book on arithmetic and geometry in 1760. This sundial is complex and fascinating, drawing in sundial enthusiasts from around the world, as well as being a useful timepiece for locals.
The sundial not only shows the time and date, but also the seasons and the date, and very unusually, the time at night, when the cylinder is illuminated.
The daytime hours are marked by a 10cm sphere in the middle of the upper part of the cylinder which casts its shadow onto the frosted glass wall, which is marked with hour lines and also lines showing the equinox and solstices.
The bottom half of the cylinder shows the night time hours. Obviously not by using the sun’s rays, but by clever use of a computer controlled laser beam! We can’t help wondering what the citizens of Humbekk of 1000 years ago would have made of that!
