Sundial

A sundial is a device that tells the time of day by the apparent position of
the Sun in the sky. In the narrowest sense of the word it consists of a flat
plate (the dial) and a gnomon which casts a shadow onto the dial. As the sun
appears to move across the sky, the shadow aligns with different hour-lines
which are marked on the dial to indicate the time of day. The style is the
time-telling edge of the gnomon, though a single point or nodus may be used.
The gnomon casts a broad shadow; the shadow of the style shows the time.
The gnomon may be a rod, a wire or an elaborately decorated metal casting.
The style must be parallel to the axis of the Earth's rotation for the sundial
to be accurate throughout the year. The style's angle from horizontal is
equal to the sundial's geographical latitude.
In a broader sense a sundial is any device that uses the sun's altitude or
azimuth (or both) to show the time. In addition to their time-telling
function, sundials are valued as decorative objects, as literary metaphors
and as objects of mathematical study.
It is common for inexpensive mass-produced decorative sundials to have
incorrectly aligned gnomons and hour-lines, which cannot be adjusted to tell
correct time.

Hourglass
An hourglass (or sandglass, sand timer, sand watch, or sand clock) is a
mechanical device used to measure the passage of time. It comprises two
glass bulbs connected vertically by a narrow neck that allows a regulated
trickle of material (historically sand) from the upper bulb to the lower one.
Factors affecting the time interval measured include the sand quantity, the
sand coarseness, the bulb size, and the neck width. Hourglasses may be
reused indefinitely by inverting the bulbs once the upper bulb is empty.
Hourglasses were an early dependable, reusable and accurate measure of
time. The rate of flow of the sand is independent of the depth in the upper
reservoir, and the instrument will not freeze in cold weather.
From the 15th century onwards, they were being used in a range of
applications at sea, in the church, in industry and in cookery.
During the voyage of Ferdinand Magellan around the globe, 18 hourglasses
from Barcelona were in the ship's inventory, after the trip being authorized
by emperor Charles V. It was the job of a ship's page to turn the
hourglasses and thus provide the times for the ship's log. Noon was the
reference time for navigation, which did not depend on the glass, as the sun
would be at its zenith. A number of sandglasses could be fixed in a common
frame, each with a different operating time, e.g. as in a four-way Italian

sandglass likely from the 17th century, in the collections of the Science
Museum, in South Kensington, London, which could measure intervals of
quarter, half, three-quarters, and one hour (and which were also used in
churches, for priests and ministers to measure lengths of sermons).