The Sunshine Recorder

I went into this video not knowing anything about how a mid-19th century sunshine recorder might work and was genuinely delighted by the reveal. If you’d like to be similarly surprised, stop reading now and just watch the video.

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The sunshine recorder was invented in 1853 for measuring the duration of bright sunshine over a day. The contraption consists of a solid glass ball that acts as a lens, which focuses the light of the Sun onto a paper recording card, burning marks into it. As the Sun moves across the sky, the focus point moves across the recording card, burning a line into it. If it’s super sunny out, the focused beam burns right through the card. So simple! So clever! And so straightforwardly physical — here’s what a daily sunshine record looks like:

(via robert stephens)

Tags: science · video · weather