Sundial

University of the Philippines Sundial

The Sundial of the University of the Philippines Diliman is presently located along G. Apacible Street between the College of Engineering and the National Engineering Center. It serves as the testament of loyalty of the alumni engineers to their Alma Mater.

I. First

The first sundial ever made by the alumni engineers of the University of the Philippines stood in the middle of the Manila campus on Taft Avenue in the 1920s. This was considered as the largest sundial built in the world at that time. It had steel arches and a gnomon 60 feet long. Unfortunately, to make way for the ROTC parade grounds, the first sundial in UP was torn down in the 1930s.

The former dean of the College of Engineering, Edward R. Hyde, designed the huge floral sundial in the middle of the Ermita Campus with the collaboration of Professors Alejandro Melchor and E.P. Angeles.

II. Second

In the span of almost two decades, engineers of the university built another sundial that was placed on the west lawn of Melchor Hall--College of Engineering. Although the second one was smaller, it was still as impressive as the first structure. It was also made of steel standing on a concrete area. Its gnomon is shaped like a slide rule, making it as the symbol of mathematics. Typhoon Yoling passed Manila and immediate vicinities of the storm season and caused destruction of campus residences and buildings. In the College of Engineering, the new east wing and the engineering theater were partially unroofed. Many acacia trees around the building were uprooted. But the most visible evidence of the force of the typhoon winds was the dislocation of the steel engineering sundial on the west front of the building. The heavy gnomon was wrenched from its foundations and carried some distance away toward the street.

III. Present

After the two destructions, the UP Alumni Engineers built another sturdier concrete sundial in 1972. However, the location was moved from the front of the Engineering Building to the space between the east wing and the UP Alumni Engineers building, along G. Apacible Street. At the base of its gnomon is the year 1947 representing the foundation year of the Alumni Engineers.