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Article: Analemma, the ancient sketch of fictitious sunpath geometry--sun, time and history of mathematics.
- Article from:
- Architectural Science Review
- Article date:
- June 1, 2004
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2004 University of Sydney, Faculty of Architecture, Design & Planning. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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In the era of computers and sophisticated technology many basic principles and concepts inherited from antiquity are sometimes forgotten. In this paper the history of a stick vertically placed in the ground, a gnomon, a shade tool for predicting time, as well as an instrument for measuring solar coordinates on a fictitious sky dome is examined. The practical needs of determining sunpaths stimulated the orthographic projections and descriptive geometry principles in traditional analemma rules, later interpreted in mathematical formulae.
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Introduction
Shanghai, Lhasa in Tibet, Southern Iraq, the pyramids near Cairo, New Orleans and ...