Analemmatic Sundial

No watch or mobile phone and wondering if the Lady Lever Art Gallery pictured in the distance will be open yet?  No problem. At ones feet is an Analemmatic Sundial.  Stand on the appropriate month on the marked

  indentation and a shadow will be cast across an hour pillar.  The inner circle is British Summer Time and the outer circle is winter's Greenwich Mean Time.  This analemmatic sundial was installed for the Queen's Diamond Jubilee in 2012 at Port Sunlight on the Wirral and was, I thought, the first I had seen, although that was not true, it was just that I didn't know they had a name.  Here is my assistant demonstrating the one near the Houses of Parliament in London 

 where his shadow tells us it is 11 O'clock (my camera's date stamp may be a little more precise at 11:30).  

An explanation of the word Anelemmatic without any bamboozling mathematics:

 "The more common sort of sundial has an angled post (usually called the gnomon, or sometimes the style) which casts a shadow on a circular dial. Its analemmatic cousin, on the other hand, has a vertical gnomon, which casts a shadow on an elliptical scale. For it to tell the time with adequate accuracy (you may recall Hilaire Belloc’s verse complaint: “I am a sundial, and I make a botch, of what is done much better by a watch”), the gnomon must first be moved to the correct position along a north-south axis according to the season. Though a small sundial of this type is rather fiddly to make and use, large ones laid out on a flat area permit a person to act as the gnomon (my local one is of this sort). Earnest enquirers after chronological intelligence then need only position themselves at the appropriate spot along the axis for the time of year and — weather permitting — they can then read off the time by noting where their shadow falls on the scale".  Source: World Wide Words

 An entry to ABC Wednesday, starting another journey through the alphabet here

Zaunkönig

I knew when I took this photo back in 2014 that it might come in handy when I had few ideas for the last letter of the alphabet so it is now making its appearance - a  T11 Zaunkönig 2 Torpedo, one of only 38 built towards the end of World War 2.  It forms part of the 'U Boat Story' in Birkenhead.  Zaunkönig means wren in German (literately 'king of the fence') but our example is a acoustic torpedo with an electronic guidance system designed to track ships by the sound of their propellers.  The Allied code for the torpedo was another small creature, GNAT (German Navy Acoustic Torpedo) and they deployed a decoy (the Foxer) which contrasted to the sophistication of the torpedo by being two metal pipes which banged together when towed to create a noise.   The Zaunkönig was 23' 7" long (7.186m) with a speed of 24 knots and a range of 6230 yards (5700m) was designed to be able to differentiate between the Foxer and propeller noise. 

The torpedo was one carried by the U534, the damage on the side done by depth chargers dropped by RAF aircraft when it sunk in the Kattegat between Sweden and Denmark (most of the crew survived) at the end of World War 2.  There were rumours it was carrying gold but when it was raised in 1993 it was discovered to be just a myth. One only four surviving U Boats (two in Germany and one in Chicago) it was almost sold for scrap but the Warship Preservation Trust brought it to Birkenhead.  In 2008 it was cut into five pieces

and moved to the Woodside Ferry Terminal and became part of the U Boat Story museum

where one can peer back through time into its claustrophobic interior.  The rusted interior contrasts with the painted exterior

Here is the part of the U Boat the German Navy call the wintergarten (the winter garden) our word of the bridge or conning tower is quite boring by comparison 

An entry to ABC Wednesday, a journey through the alphabet coming to its end here

      

The Toy Train

Wishing a everyone a Happy Holiday and Merry Christmas

XXIV Hour Clock

Would I be able to work out the time after an Xmas drink or two with this clock? My brow might furrow. At the time of its installation in 1852 it was a cutting edge Galvano-Magnetic Clock (electricity at the time was called Galvanism).  As can be seen by its accumulating number of Xs it is a 24 hour clock.  The minute and second hands are conventional but the hour arm goes round the dial only once in 24 hours, or should I say in XXIV hours.

This man stood a long time at the clock which welcomes one into the home of Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) and is called simply the Shepherd 24 Hour Gate Clock.  Of course there are also the explanations of The Time Ball (which drops down at 13:00), the Ordnance Survey Bench Mark and the Public Standards of Length. Ah yes the good old days of feet and inches. The inscription of 'Shepherd Patentee' on the clock is significant because there was a dispute when he installed the clocks at Greenwich whether or not he was the inventor (he was).  The galvanism or electric signalling transmitted time pulses from Greenwich to slave clocks throughout the country and rather than each area of the country having a different time (nightmare for running a railway system) there was one single time. Eventually, as Shepherd envisioned, the pulses were also sent via submarine cables across the world.  The Gate Clock is the visualisation of unified time although there is a rather more workmanlike, but just as interesting, master clock in the observatory.

The Royal Observatory says the Shepherd clock is one of the most photographed objects at the Observatory ( here is an early c1870 view).  I proved the Observatory right by taking a picture of the clock location as I entered the gate and a close up of the clock as I left.  There was lots to see in-between those two times, not to mention tea and cake on the Gagarin Terrace.

An entry to ABC Wednesday, a journey through the alphabet, this week sojourning at X here 

 

           

Water

We have had a lot of water recently weeks and weeks of rain  as the storms come in wave upon wave from the Atlantic but here on the sunny May days of my photographs there is not a drop is in the air.  Silently and unseen an underground water supply makes its way to the taps of the valley.  Nature gave us a dryish summer and the boating house of the local park lake closed up because water levels were too low but they were high enough for the resident water fowl. 

The Goose family were too quick for me, taking to the water as I approached.  I often saw this pair in May always attentive to their lone chick, the other eggs cannot have hatched and probably fallen victim to a predator, I suspect the local herring gulls who are always after an easy meal.  Inland the gulls are nowhere to be seen and in a water fountain

this duck is showing off  its waterproof feather as it made a slow turn changing direction under the rhododendron trees

the sunlight dazzlingoff the droplets. 

Russell Square fountain, London

Was this little boy about to test the waterproof nature of his clothing (nil) or skin (good)?  Water fountains are an irresistable attraction with their frothing water but I think he is undecided and one small step might be enough. It was a rather chilly day, as you can see from the number of people wearing jackets and scarves.

An entry to ABC Wednesday, a journey through the alphabet, this week sojourning at W here   

 

Verdant Veg

 As I come from an area of heavy clay soil the Suffolk free draining sandy soil fascinates me. Half of the land in this corner of East England grows cereal in its light soil but sugar beet is often grown in rotation as it returns organic matter to the soil. I'm rather fond of crop lines following  the roll of a landscape so these verdant leaf lines were irresistible. This is also England's driest and sunniest corner so all sorts of vegetables can be found in the fields

along with a few interlopers. Who does not love the intense colour of a field of sunflowers but the surprise of finding

a bright yellow face shining out of a sea of green brings its own pleasure. With the changes of farming practises the unproductive (in farming terms) margins of fields have become an important habitat for

native flowers, grasses and fauna.  Larger fields often mean fewer margins but in

the case of this old footpath running down the middle of a field, the margin is also in the middle.  It is a way that must have been walked for hundreds of years through many seasons and rotations of crops to and from Orford's 12th century castle, church and the village.

An entry to ABC Wednesday, a journey through the alphabet, this week sojourning at V here

   

Union Jack on Holiday

Union Jacks being flown at the entrance to Port Haverigg Holiday Park to welcome the residents.  There was a discussion at the time Scotland was voting whether to become independent of the United Kingdom what our national flag might look like without the St Andrews Cross on it and a number of possible designs produced.  As it never happened no need to buy fresh flags, yet.

Lets take a walk down the road

and something unexpected may be seen outside one of the holiday homes which overlook the Hodbarrow Lagoon.  A miniature lighthouse, complete with little door, cottage and boathouse made with beach pebbles. Our artist has also included a windmill. Perhaps the miller and the lighthouse keeper go to the

 little church across the path on Sundays.  It doesn't show up too well on the photograph but the snaking sign says, or should I say hisses, "Pleeesse Water'. A plea to the unheedful gardener?

An entry to ABC Wednesday, a journey through the alphabet, this week sojourning at U here