The Romans adopted the Greek sundials, and the first record of a sun-dial in Rome is 293 BC according to Pliny.
In about 14 BC, Roman engineer Marcus Vitruvius Pollio used the projection to construct sundials and to compute sun positions.
The ‘Ur’ in URWERK’s name refers to the ancient Sumerian city of Ur where over 6,000 years ago people used giant sundials to measure time; the ‘werk’ refers to the German noun ‘das Werk’ meaning ‘work’ or ‘creation’.