title: The Eclipse of the Sun: Sun-dials, Clocks and Natural Time in the Late Seventeenth Century.
abstract: The Sun, in the early seventeenth century was, as it always had been, the ultimate arbiter of time-measurement In the last quarter of the century however this role was called into question as the new precision of post-Huygenian clocks revealed that natural time and the artificial mean time of the clock were not the same. Initially the question was little understood by the general public. The paper examines some early attempts to explain why "Sun-time" in 1700 was no longer "true-time."
authors.forename: Anthony
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Turner
mesh_terms: D055580:Astronomical Phenomena; D049670:History, 17th Century; D012586:Science / Q000266:history*; D016082:Solar System; D013995:Time