There aren't as many dials around as there used to be.
Telephones don't usually have them:
photo by Takkk
and neither do radios:
photo by Nite_Owl
But there are still dials to be found. My (newish) microwave has a dial, for instance, and kitchen scales sometimes do, and so do some other beautiful old machines:
photo by Sterilgutassistentin
and so, of course, does my watch:
photo by suebun (this is not my watch)
If you're a Londoner then there will also be fewer dials about the place than usual, but you should still be able to spot approximately half of one quite easily behind the masks, because dial is a London word for a face.
Spot the Frippet: dial. The first sort of a dial was one of these:
photo by liz west
The word comes from the Old French dyal, and before that probably from the Latin dialis, which means daily. It's also probably something to do with a very ancient word, older than Latin and Greek, which means to shine. The Latin phrase rota dialis, daily wheel, may have suggested the word in the first place.
I can't go there in person today but here is a picture of Seven Dials in London. In the middle there is a column with six sundials. It was originally supposed to have six roads but they changed it to seven roads and it was too late to add another sundial to the column.
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Megan