The Portland Press-Herald has an interesting story today about a hunt in that city for a lost sundial of unusual design:
They were not looking for just any sundial, but a new and improved version patented by scientist and inventor Albert Cushing Crehore in 1905. Unlike a traditional sundial, with a flat dial and an upright triangular blade to cast shadows, Crehore’s featured a partial cylinder supported by four pillars. The design would make it “an accurate timepiece at all times when the sun is shining,” the patent application said. In his 1944 autobiography, Crehore listed only a few of his sundials that were built, but said one was installed somewhere in Portland. He didn’t say where.
The story is timely because the city is hosting the conference of a great-sounding organization: The North American Sundial Society.
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