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Checking time is child's play in today's day and age ... but, some refuse to take the easy way out opting for instruments that were used way back in 3,500 B.C.
Electrical engineer Henry Timme has held a childhood fascination with celestial bodies and one of his hobbies, as a young man passionate about mathematics and sailing, was to navigate the seas by measuring the position of the sun and the stars.
He recently outpoured his interest in 'time' by designing and painting a sundial, which can help determine the time and the date by using the position of the shadow cast by the sun on 45 ceramic tiles. It will be installed over the main entrance of his holiday home in Plettenberg Bay, a village in South Africa.
Mr Timme, 68, from Germany, who lives with wife Lynnette, an English teacher at Ibn Khuldoon School, in A'Ali, said that he had never painted on a tile before this project in his entire life. He said: "For many, many years I have been fascinated by the whole concept of time. I have done a lot of celestial navigation that is related to celestial movement.
"In my travels I have come across many sundials. All over Europe you have horizontal and vertical sundials. The vertical wall sundial is rather interesting because you have to find a wall that is facing the correct way and you have to make certain corrections in the design to get the accurate time. There are also some famous ones and very large ones.
"The concept is nothing new but it has always fascinated me. If you look through the internet you will find thousands of models and pictures. We have a small holiday cottage and I wanted to add the sundial on a wall which I thought was a nice feature.
"Initially I was planning to paint it directly on to the wall but when I saw a lot of tiles painted by children at St Christopher's School in Saar I decided to take up the challenge to make a feature that can stand out as something special."
Working on evenings and weekends for over two-months, the granddad initially began by learning how to handle brushes and painting on trial tiles. He then designed and perfected his model on a large chart paper on his dining table.
Planned to the smallest of details like the angle of the wall, Mr Timme has built into his sundial the longitude and latitude of his house, the variation of the sun's shadows through the year and the months are represented by zodiac signs. An Ana lemma or the equation of time to calculate whether the sun is behind, ahead, exact or advanced from our regular watch through the year is also included as an important feature.
Transferring the model on to semi-painted ceramic tiles with precise lines and angles was the next challenge. Enthused by the entire project, managers at Studio Ceramics in Budaiya Highway, where he painted and then baked his tiles, dedicated a separate space for him.
Mr Timme said: "I would not be able to do this without the advice and support from the people here. They taught me how to paint and to handle the brushes.
"The design is based on the actual position of the wall. Theoretically the sun moves 15 degrees every hour. But if the wall is not oriented completely to east west, then you would need to offset the shadow lines accordingly. A shadow spike or gnomon adjusted to the angle of the latitude so that it is parallel to the earth's axis will casts a shadow that will indicate the sun's time.
"However, it is not as simple as it sounds. There are a number of refinements in this. The movement of the sun in the year is not as uniform as the time we keep on our watch. There is a discrepancy between the solar time and a chronometer due to the inclination of the earth's axis and because the path of the sun around the earth is not circular but elliptical.
"So sometimes the sun time can be 14 minutes behind your watch time while sometimes it accelerates to go up to 16 minutes ahead. These effects, as well as the fact that the sun is lower in winter and will cast a longer shadow, whereas in summer for the same time it will cast a shorter shadow had to be taken into account in drawing the diagram."
Using carbon paper Mr Timme carefully transferred the measured lines on to the semi-painted tiles. The present challenge is to transfer the entire set including spare tiles without damage to South Africa and permanently instal it there.
Pleased with the outcome, Mr Timme said: "To do something creative is very satisfying for the mind and soul and I enjoyed taking a break from daily stresses and strains and bringing a concept that was in my mind to a reality that I can touch."
