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Old 6th August 2007, 01:40 PM   #8 (permalink)
Nik
Speaker to Cats
 
Join Date: Jul 2007
Location: UK: ENGLAND:
Posts: 308
Re: How to measure time in a medieval world?

Candles in eg religious orders.

Sand-glass aboard ship.

Sundial could be as simple as a stick and a few scratches. IIRC, there were even *pocket* sun-dials and moon-dials.

Um, before modern sextants and 'shooting the sun', there were eye-ball navigation / optical astronomy stuff going back to the Sumerians etc who named the ecliptic's dozen constellations.

( And, yes, polar wobble etc has long-since rendered those designations obsolete-- so *Phaw!* to modern 'Astrologers' and their ilk ;- )

Marked staffs and cross-pieces and weighted strings, engraved, nested brass disks that resembled circular slide-rules etc etc.

Oh, and do NOT forget the Antikythera whatsit.

Antikythera mechanism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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