How can a sundial reliably work when the sun’s position in the sky changes from day to day and month to month with days getting longer/shorter, etc?

Question

How can a sundial reliably work when the sun’s position in the sky changes from day to day and month to month with days getting longer/shorter, etc?

In: Technology

Answer 1

By the way we define time now, they aren’t. But before mechanical clocks were widespread, the time you got from the sun was accepted as the actual time. Early mechanical clocks (the very fancy ones anyway) sometimes had modules built that would convert to the time the sundial said it was.