London Stock Exchange - Paternoster Square, London, UK
N 51° 30.891 W 000° 05.972
30U E 701244 N 5711069
A noon mark sundial on the wall of the London Stock Exchange.
Waymark Code: WMCDTB
Location: London, United Kingdom
Date Posted: 08/26/2011
Views: 9
With the glare of the white Portland stone wall this noon mark can be difficult to see! But it's big - very big! It is to be found on the north side of Paternoster Square on the wall of the London Stock Exchange. The square is pedestrianised and is available 24/7/365.
The base of the noon mark is about 4.5 metres (15 feet) above the ground and is about 10 metres (33 feet) high.
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Noon marks
The simplest sundials do not give the hours, but rather note the exact moment of 1200 noon. In centuries past, such dials were used to correct mechanical clocks, which were sometimes so inaccurate as to lose or gain significant time in a single day.
In US colonial-era houses, a noon-mark can often be found carved into a floor or windowsill. Such marks indicate local noon, and they provide a simple and accurate time reference for households that do not possess accurate clocks. In modern times, some Asian countries, post offices have set their clocks from a precision noon-mark. These in turn provided the times for the rest of the society. The typical noon-mark sundial was a lens set above an analemmatic plate. The plate has an engraved figure-eight shape, which corresponds to plotting the equation of time versus the solar declination. When the edge of the sun's image touches the part of the shape for the current month, this indicates that it is 1200 noon.
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An interesting read can be found, by the man who designed the noon mark, here: (
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