Pocket watches are all well and good, but they have some caveats. They either need regular rewinding, or they need batteries. Sundials on the other hand need only the light from our One True Sun.

Curator Peggy Kidwell solves the mystery of a pocket sundial from the 1600s Peggy Aldrich Kidwell and Sara J. Schechner First, a bit of background on sundials. From ancient times, people have used ...

See more of our trusted coverage when you search. Prefer Newsweek on Google to see more of our trusted coverage when you search. A very rare medieval pocket sundial has been discovered at an ...

The sundial is a very-old tool used to tell time. It is said that the earliest sundials were made in 1500 B.C., and variations were made by the Greeks, Chinese and Romans. Pocket sundials were very ...

French pioneers wandering North America in the 1700s didn't carry cellphones in their pockets. Instead, they might have carried small pocket sundials. Those ancient devices used the direction and ...

This week, Editor-in-Chief Elliot Williams and Contributor Emeritus Kristina Panos chewed the fat about the coolest hacks of the previous week. But first, a bit of news — our Low Power Challenge ...

Sometimes, the records of unassuming objects preserve curious stories. Over the past year, while trying to find out more about a small portable sundial in the museum's collection, curator Peggy ...