Science
Related: About this forumDecoding the Antikythera Mechanism, the First Computer
After 2,000 years under the sea, three flat, misshapen pieces of bronze at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens are all shades of green, from emerald to forest. From a distance, they look like rocks with patches of mold. Get closer, though, and the sight is stunning. Crammed inside, obscured by corrosion, are traces of technology that appear utterly modern: gears with neat triangular teeth (just like the inside of a clock) and a ring divided into degrees (like the protractor you used in school). Nothing else like this has ever been discovered from antiquity. Nothing as sophisticated, or even close, appears again for more than a thousand years.
For decades after divers retrieved these scraps from the Antikythera wreck from 1900 to 1901, scholars were unable to make sense of them. X-ray imaging in the 1970s and 1990s revealed that the device must have replicated the motions of the heavens. Holding it in your hands, you could track the paths of the Sun, Moon and planets with impressive accuracy. One investigator dubbed it an ancient Greek computer. But the X-ray images were difficult to interpret, so mainstream historians ignored the artifact even as it was championed by fringe writers such as Erich von Däniken, who claimed it came from an alien spaceship. It wasnt until 2006 that the Antikythera mechanism captured broader attention. That year, Mike Edmunds of Cardiff University in Wales and his team published CT scans of the fragments, revealing more details of the inner workings, as well as hidden inscriptionsand triggering a burst of scholarly research.
The Antikythera mechanism was similar in size to a mantel clock, and bits of wood found on the fragments suggest it was housed in a wooden case. Like a clock, the case wouldve had a large circular face with rotating hands. There was a knob or handle on the side, for winding the mechanism forward or backward. And as the knob turned, trains of interlocking gearwheels drove at least seven hands at various speeds. Instead of hours and minutes, the hands displayed celestial time: one hand for the Sun, one for the Moon and one for each of the five planets visible to the naked eyeMercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn. A rotating black and silver ball showed the phase of the Moon. Inscriptions explained which stars rose and set on any particular date. There were also two dial systems on the back of the case, each with a pin that followed its own spiral groove, like the needle on a record player. One of these dials was a calendar. The other showed the timing of lunar and solar eclipses.
Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/decoding-antikythera-mechanism-first-computer-180953979/
Stryst
(714 posts)Sorry, couldn't help it. Ancient Aliens was on "History" does this need a sarcasm tag?) when I saw this.
tinrobot
(10,903 posts)A device this complex probably had numerous prototypes and predecessors.
I'd love to see the devices that lead to this.
csziggy
(34,136 posts)Just really big, kludgy ones, of course. They were just ways to figure out when certain events were going to happen.
DetlefK
(16,423 posts)IMO an abacus is a computer, Stonehenge is just a big ruler.
a ruler (or any device for physical measurement, for that matter) is a computer in that it provides output in response to input.
Maybe I'm being simplistic here, so I'll add that I also regard DNA to be a computer.
OED
computer - An electronic device for storing and processing data, typically in binary form, according to instructions given to it in a variable program.
DNA, unlike a ruler, is sort of like a computer, in that it stores and processes data according to instructions.
By your definition, anything that responds in any way in any environment is a computer, i.e. everything is a computer.
"By your definition, anything that responds in any way in any environment is a computer, i.e. everything is a computer."
That's sort of my point.
The OED definition you cite (are there others?) seems to rule out Babbage, etc., not to mention the brain, btw.
This popular notion that computers arose with the advent of electronics is misguided, IMO.
Android3.14
(5,402 posts)It's about as useful defining everything as "food" if it can be consumed. You can slap whatever labels you want on stuff, but doing so does not make the labels correct...or useful.
bvf
(6,604 posts)I never said "everything"--you did. That was a mischaracterization of my argument on your part.
Do you agree that Babbage's machine qualifies as a computer? If so, please reconcile your answer with your OED citation.
According to the (single) OED definition you provided, there was no such thing as a computer prior to the advent of the development of electronics. That's an absurd notion.
Android3.14
(5,402 posts)It's about your definition, which is an incorrect characterization of "computer". According to your latest definition "Anything that provides output in response to input", if a dog wags its tail in response to the sight of a bone, then the dog is a computer. If a trashcan accepts garbage and then someone dumps it out, then the trashcan is a computer.
Okay, I've had enough. This is too silly of an argument.
bvf
(6,604 posts)It's only a silly argument if you fail to see the difference between the two.
Read up a bit on computation theory--you might find it interesting. And don't quote the OED if you're inclined to dismiss your own citation when called on it.
Android3.14
(5,402 posts)I don't think that word means what you think it does. But then again, that seems to be the basic issue.
GIGO.
Resort to 40-year-old terminology if you must, but that doesn't change my point.
SeattleVet
(5,477 posts)You don't just make something this complex without having small intermediate steps. You have to wonder about the ship that this was on. Was it one of the 'high-tech' leading edge ships of the time, or was it a run-of-the-mill merchant ship? That is, how common could this have been? If there was one of these, why not 10, or 100? Were the plans for this something that was destroyed in the great library of Alexandria, and, if so, what other wonders were lost to antiquity?
In addition to the Smithsonian article above, there is a very good article at Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism
LongTomH
(8,636 posts)Basically, it's an orerry, a device for modeling the movements of planets. We do tend to call any calculating device, from the ancient abacus down to Alan Turing's Colussus machine for decoding the German Enigma messages computers.
Strictly speaking, a modern computer is a device which can be programmed using instructions that are stored in memory, along with data.
It is a brilliant piece of ancient craftsmanship. The techniques for building devices like this was probably handed down from master to apprentice, possibly through generations, which is how it was so easily lost to history.
hunter
(38,317 posts)So many technologies have been developed to very high levels in the past, and then they've been lost when society disintegrated into brutish ignorance and war, some of this war driven by high art and technology...
I was thinking of this video posted by Major Nikon:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1018714786
Some of the most terrible losses we are just overcoming now are in the technologies of organic agriculture and permaculture.
In many places the aboriginal people had very sophisticated and sustainable ways of growing food and medicine, but those who took their lands dismissed all those ways as primitive and discarded them.
I'm not any kind of romanticist about indigenous people, some of their ways were as warlike and as superstitious and as environmentally destructive as the invaders, losing only to the invader's superior weapons, organizational skills, and diseases (Jared Diamond's Guns, Germs, and Steel), but imagine how far we might have progressed by now if humans were a less brutal lot.
On the other hand, maybe we are all just children and idiots. Imagine how dangerous and deadly we might have been if we'd developed things like hydrogen bombs and missiles too soon.
Brother Buzz
(36,444 posts)I'm just saying.