This UTIAS clock does not tick...

By Joan Wilson DaCosta

In 1974, the announcement was made that Dr. G.N. Patterson and his wife Alberta would be retiring from UTIAS. Although Alberta was never on the payroll, she had played a crucial operational role at UTIAS and she was also retiring.

In honour of all that Alberta Patterson had contributed to UTIAS, she was presented with a sundial – the sundial that you walk past as you approach the entry to UTIAS. But this is no ordinary sundial. This sundial was designed by Dr. John Locke from UTIAS, and the following article explains what makes it unique (I have enlarged the portion of the article with the technical explanation):

Newspaper clipping from University of Toronto Bulletin, April 5, 1974 Headline: Unique sundial presented to wife of Aerospace’s Gordon Patterson Photo: Two men and two women stand around an ornate sundial. Caption: Dr. Japp de Leeuw, director-designate, Institute for Aerospace Studies; Chancellor McGibbon, Mrs. Gordon N. Patterson, Dr. Patterson, retiring director of the Institute and the sundial. In a ceremony on April 2, at the Institute for Aerospace Studies of the University of Toronto, Chancellor Pauline McGibbon and Mrs. Bernard Etkin, wife of the Dean of Engineering, unveiled an artistic sundial and dedicated it to Alberta Patterson, wife of the soon-to-retire Director of the Institute, Dr. Gordon N. Patterson, for her many social and aesthetic contributions to the working environment of the Institute over the past twenty-five years. Mrs. Patterson was instrumental in adding such pleasant touches as a flower garden, an annual children’s Christmas party, help in planning the archival library and numerous other things that helped make the atmosphere of this erudite institution warm and congenial. The sundial will be located in a prominent place on the grounds of the Institute as a lasting tribute to Mrs. Patterson. Appropriately, the sundial, being a clock operated by the solar system, symbolizes the Institute’s technological activities in aeronautics, space and applied physics. It was constructed in copper by the well-known Toronto artist Laso Buday following a new technical design by Dr. John Locke of the Institute. It consists of a conventional horizontal dial and gnomon (the triangular pointer) thirty inches in diameter. Six copper panels, each with two of the signs of the Zodiac sculptured in bas-relief, form an artistic frieze twenty inches high about the circumference of the dial. The sundial has a novel technical ingredient that allows it to tell clock time accurately. The dial markings follow a new computer-generated form which, together with an ability of the dial to rotate on a weatherized bearing, allows the new type of sundial to tell clock time accurate to within one minute despite seasonal variations. Dr. Locke explained that an elementary sundial tells “sun-time,” not clock time, and is therefore in error by as much as sixteen minutes, depending on the time of year. The whole problem arises from the fact that the Earth proceeds around the sun along an ellipse, not a circle. This slight eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit causes the length of the apparent or solar day to vary considerably and so sun-time and clock time are only in agreement on certain dates. In the new design one has only to set a pointer to the approximate date (within a week) and a simple mechanical computer makes the appropriate correction automatically by rotating the dial by a few degrees. It just computes the figure-eight curve called the analemma shown on most globes, said Dr. Locke.
Newspaper clipping from University of Toronto Bulletin, April 5, 1974 Headline: Unique sundial presented to wife of Aerospace’s Gordon Patterson Photo: Two men and two women stand around an ornate sundial. Caption: Dr. Japp de Leeuw, director-designate, Institute for Aerospace Studies; Chancellor McGibbon, Mrs. Gordon N. Patterson, Dr. Patterson, retiring director of the Institute and the sundial. In a ceremony on April 2, at the Institute for Aerospace Studies of the University of Toronto, Chancellor Pauline McGibbon and Mrs. Bernard Etkin, wife of the Dean of Engineering, unveiled an artistic sundial and dedicated it to Alberta Patterson, wife of the soon-to-retire Director of the Institute, Dr. Gordon N. Patterson, for her many social and aesthetic contributions to the working environment of the Institute over the past twenty-five years. Mrs. Patterson was instrumental in adding such pleasant touches as a flower garden, an annual children’s Christmas party, help in planning the archival library and numerous other things that helped make the atmosphere of this erudite institution warm and congenial. The sundial will be located in a prominent place on the grounds of the Institute as a lasting tribute to Mrs. Patterson. Appropriately, the sundial, being a clock operated by the solar system, symbolizes the Institute’s technological activities in aeronautics, space and applied physics. It was constructed in copper by the well-known Toronto artist Laso Buday following a new technical design by Dr. John Locke of the Institute. It consists of a conventional horizontal dial and gnomon (the triangular pointer) thirty inches in diameter. Six copper panels, each with two of the signs of the Zodiac sculptured in bas-relief, form an artistic frieze twenty inches high about the circumference of the dial. The sundial has a novel technical ingredient that allows it to tell clock time accurately. The dial markings follow a new computer-generated form which, together with an ability of the dial to rotate on a weatherized bearing, allows the new type of sundial to tell clock time accurate to within one minute despite seasonal variations. Dr. Locke explained that an elementary sundial tells “sun-time,” not clock time, and is therefore in error by as much as sixteen minutes, depending on the time of year. The whole problem arises from the fact that the Earth proceeds around the sun along an ellipse, not a circle. This slight eccentricity of the Earth’s orbit causes the length of the apparent or solar day to vary considerably and so sun-time and clock time are only in agreement on certain dates. In the new design one has only to set a pointer to the approximate date (within a week) and a simple mechanical computer makes the appropriate correction automatically by rotating the dial by a few degrees. It just computes the figure-eight curve called the analemma shown on most globes, said Dr. Locke.

In all the years that I worked at UTIAS, I had no idea that the UTIAS sundial had moving parts. I now wonder if the parts can still move given that nobody I am aware of has tried to use the sundial in years.

Perhaps a curious student will try the sundial and report back...

And FYI, the copper sundial was made by Laszlo Buday, the same artist who created the copper panel in the Archival Library.

Update on last week’s email:

We now know that the first woman to graduate from UTIAS with her MASc was Jean MackWorth. Jean graduated from U of T in 1963 with her undergrad in Honours Maths and Physics. After working as a summer student at UTIAS for 3 of those years, she then did her MASc with Prof. Etkin. Jean married fellow UTIAS student David Surry, so on February 12, 1965, she graduated with her MASc as Jean Surry.

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