Roamin' for the Gnomon

A half-century quest for a gnomon has finally come to happy issue, we are delighted to report.

A gnomon is that vertical piece of a horizontal sundial whose shadow indicates the time of day. The particular gnomon in question was an extant example of the work of 18th century dialmakers Heath and Wing, who built the sundial for Eleazar Wheelock's garden, presented to the College by Captain Samuel Holland, His Majesty's "Surveyor-General of the Northern District of America," in appreciation of the hospitality bestowed upon him at Dartmouth's 1772 Commencement.

Over the years, after the Wheelock mansion was moved to West Wheelock Street to make way for Reed Hall, the sundial remained half-forgotten in Shattuck Observatory. When it was rediscovered in the 1920s, the original gnomon was missing; in its stead there was a wooden triangle, apparently made to serve as a replacement. Thereupon, Mathematics Professor Charles N. Haskins set about finding another Heath and Wing sundial, from which a copy of the gnomon might be made to restore "the earliest signed and dated scientific instrument" in the College collection. Despite a wide search through English contacts, he failed to uncover a prototype, and once again the sundial was retired, this time to a vault in Baker Library, where it remained for some 40 years.

It reappeared in the 1960s, when Physics Professor Alan L. King took up the quest for an authentic model. In 1973, after tracking down several fruitless leads in England, he reluctantly concluded "that "the Dartmouth dial may be the sole surviving horizontal garden sundial by these eighteenth century instrument makers."

But the tale was not to end there. As King reports in last month's issue of the Library Bulletin, through a fortuitous happenstance, not one but two Heath and Wing sundials have been located in the shop of a London antique dealer, who has sent photographs. Out of the gloamin' into the light, the gnomon of Eleazar's timepiece seems at last on the verge of restoration.