BLACKPOOL Pleasure Beach has produced yet another " first" as it unveiled its new solar-powered attraction this week.

The ten-feet-tall, three-tonne sundial is unique and the most advanced of its kind in the world because no one has ever made a vertical sundial that is so accurate.

Most sundials only tell the "sun-time", which can be anything up to 20 minutes out. But this clock makes the adjustments automatically, thanks to the special curves on its surface.

Specially designed to sit at the Pleasure Beach, the unusual timepiece is the work of Sir Mark Lennox Boyd and expert engraver Andrew Irvine, pictured here next to the sundial with Pleasure Beach managing director Geoffrey Thompson, and would become inaccurate if moved less than half-a-mile from its present placing.

Made of Cumbrian slate, the sundial is engraved and gilded in pure gold.

The science behind this design has been known for several centuries, but before the advent of computers to work out the complex calculations, no one could have undertaken such a task.

Geoffrey Thompson said: "I am extremely pleased to have such a beautiful and unusual creation grace the park.

"It stands as a classical reminder of the passage of time amid all the technology as the Pleasure Beach heads into its second century."