Birthstones Wheel

Birthstones Wheel puts every tradition of birthstones on one wheel. The birthstone you were sold is one list among many. The Jews, the Romans, the Arabians, the Poles and the Russians each gave the months their own stones. The astrologers gave stones to the signs, the planets, the days and the hours. The jewellers of Kansas City drew up a trade list in 1912. This app shows every one of them side by side, and never picks a winner.

38 lists and 93 stones, each read from George Frederick Kunz's The Curious Lore of Precious Stones (1913), the book that untangled them, and each given with the line of the book it came from. Every name is kept as it was printed. Nothing modern is presented as ancient, and the virtues of a stone are reported as history, never as advice.

THE WHEEL A ring of months, signs, days, hours or seasons, with a stone on every segment and a pointer at the present. Spin it, tap any stone, and fill the ring from whichever list you choose. Beneath it, the stones of this moment: the month, the sign, the day, the hour and the season, each naming the list it came from.

EVERYTHING IS COMPUTED ON YOUR DEVICE • The sign, from the Sun's true position, so a birth on the day the Sun changes sign is placed exactly, or shown under both signs where no time is known • The seasons, from the equinoxes and solstices, turned round for the southern hemisphere if you ask • The planet of each weekday, the hour's stone and the consensus across the lists you choose

BIRTH Enter a date, and a time if you know it, and see every stone that applies to one person: the month's stones from every list with the one they most agree on, the sign's stone and verse, the stones of the weekday and the hour of birth, the season, the planet, and the month's guardian angel, apostle and flower. Save as many people as you like. Wedding anniversaries too, with this year's gift and the next one due.

TRADITIONS Every list as Kunz prints it, from the breastplate of Aaron and the foundation stones of Revelation to the navaratna of India, the gems of the hours and the fixed stars. A grid compares thirteen lists of the months at once, with the stone they most agree on.

STONES A dictionary of 93 stones, with the historical names that map to each, every list it appears in, its mineralogy from Dana's System of Mineralogy (1892), and its lore quoted from Kunz. Search by any name a stone has gone by, or filter by colour.

SAVED AND SHARED Keep the people and stones you like, and find again the ones you read recently. Share any stone or birth profile as a card.

WIDGETS AND NOTIFICATIONS Home Screen widgets for the stone of the hour and the stones of the present, and Lock Screen widgets for the hour's stone. An optional daily notification of the day's stones, and a word the morning before a saved person's birthday.

EVERY STONE ILLUSTRATED A plate for every stone in the manner of an Edwardian book of gems. Every image is an interpretation, made uniquely for the app.

IPHONE AND IPAD Universal, with the wheel and the stone plates drawn large on iPad and the comparison grid showing every list at once.

PRIVATE BY DESIGN No ads. No tracking. No account. No subscriptions. No in-app purchases. The app never goes online and never asks for your location. Buy it once and keep it.