Campus icon retains history, myth from 1868

IU students Otto Klopsch and Mathilde Zwicker met for the first time beside the sun dial near Maxwell Hall sometime in the early 1890s. \nBefore the century was over, the two campus sweethearts were married and their meeting spot became a part of IU's lore. Though the numbers on the dial are worn down and its time has been distorted over the years, the dial, built in 1868, still exists as a central point to that and other campus traditions and stories. \nKlopsch died in 1933 and his wife passed away two years later. In an emotional meeting with then-president William Lowe Bryan, the son, also named Otto Klopsch, received permission to scatter his parents' ashes at their meeting place in 1935.\nKlopsch did so and then donated the urn to IU to be preserved. It is still displayed in the reading room of IU Archives in Bryan Hall.\n"We have scattered their ashes to the winds at the sun dial on the university campus," Otto Klopsch wrote in a letter also signed by his two sisters. "May their spirit rest as peacefully as it lived happily while they studied and loved on these grounds."\nEven before Bryan, the sun dial proved the setting for a joke involving the fifth IU president, Cyrus Nutt, which may or may not be entirely accurate. Supposedly, Nutt tried to light a match one night at the dial to see what time it was.\nThe dial itself is in place thanks to professor C.M. Dodd, who came up with the idea. The class of 1868 then rallied behind the idea, raising the necessary $150.50 to build it. Originally constructed on IU's old campus -- where Bloomington High School South is now -- it was moved to its current position by Dunn Woods in 1906.\nThis dial is not, however, the only one at IU. Another dial was constructed in 1977 outside Assembly Hall. That one rotates on an axis parallell to Earth, which ensures it will always keep the correct time.