18th Century Watch - HS 011

HS 011

Pocket Sundial

Era: 18th Century

Details: replica, made in early 21st century

So, I was looking at the blog and realized that I haven't posted anything up from the historical collections in awhile. Thus today I bring you a blast from the past - 18th century past that is. Years ago I visited Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia. It's pretty interesting, they do all the re-enactments and such showing exactly what life was like back in the 1700's before the United States was. Now as much as I liked seeing and learning the history there was one particular souvenir that I really wanted. It was this pocket watch, well predecessor to it.

Back then, technology was pretty far back from where it is today. Benjamin Franklin still had yet to invent the bifocals, something we still consider to be low tech. The pocket watch that we still think of usually with a gold chain, were around at this time but were high luxury items that very few people could afford (it was spring driven so you would have to keep winding it up as well). So for the more middle class they had these pocket watches that were sundials. And for those who don't know sundials tell time using the relative position of the sun which creates a shadow and the shadow indicates the time. However because sundials require a fixed position in order to work, a pocket version doesn't seem to make sense. But with the simple addition of a compass, one can simply orient it North and find out the time. Given enough sunlight however.

EDIT: I found the actual instruction booklet that the compass came with so here is an excerpt giving some more information for you. "This type of instrument was made in England and Germany in the middle 1700's and, quite naturally, proved a useful item in early America, as a timepiece and functional compass. A pocket watch of that time was too expensive and fragile for the frontier.

Now and then parts of an old compass will turn up - sometimes in a garden when struck by a plow, or on an archaeological dig. Such a find was made in 1965 on Roger' Island, near Fort Edward, New York."