Researchers find hidden Greek text on 'world's oldest astronomy computer'

The size of a shoebox, a mysterious bronze device scooped out of a Roman-era shipwreck at the dawn of the 20th century has baffled scientists for years. Now a British researcher has stunningly established it as the world's oldest surviving astronomy computer.
A team of Greek and British scientists probing the secrets of the Antikythera Mechanism has managed to decipher ancient Greek inscriptions unseen for over 2,000 years, members of the project say.

"Part of the text on the machine, over 1,000 characters, had already been deciphered, but we have succeeded in doubling this total," said physician Yiannis Bitsakis, part of a multi-disciplinary team of researchers from universities in Athens, Salonika and Cardiff, the Athens National Archaeological Museum and the Hewlett-Packard company.

"We have now deciphered 95 percent of the text," he told AFP.

Scooped out of a Roman shipwreck located in 1900 by sponge divers near the southern Greek island of Antikythera, and kept at the Athens National Archaeological Museum, the Mechanism contains over 30 bronze wheels and dials, and is covered in astronomical inscriptions.

http://www.physorg.com/news68796309.html

how like a god!

all sorts of places. They traveled round the Horn of Africa before anybody. A seagoing people, traders, extremely bright, built Solomon's Temple, built all the Egyptians' famous works, not interested in land acquisition and land-based empires, more interested in being the connective tissue of civilization and its engineers-- a truly fascinating race, clever, mysterious, deeply connected to the Greek mathematicians; they brought the alphabet to the Greeks (and to all of us), and were wiped out by the Romans at Carthage, and their last vestiges (my guess)--the Celtic Druids--wiped out at Angelsey Island when the Romans conquered Britain. The stuff of Wizards and Merlins.

Just imagine, two thousand years from now, future humans looking back at our era, and finding evidence of NASA engineers who put men on the moon, and studying what became of NASA under the dumbfuck Bush empire.

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But history doesn't repeat itself. Remember that. It is a gyre with repeating themes. Nothing is inevitable. We always have a choice.

ALL? Like the pyramids inclusive?

I will have hours of fun surfing this site. Lots of interesting science news and information. Wonder who sponsors it? I tried to check the "contact us" part but they do not say who they are. I am sure they are safe ~ probably one of those "science haters" that our wingnut patriots love so much! LOL

http://www.world-mysteries.com/sar_4.htm

Here's a picture of what a new one might have looked like:



(This is described as an 'artistic impression' on the source page, found here.

Here's the back side:



:wow:

Okay, I'm no mechanical engineer, this seems like it would have required very precise gear construction to be even remotely reliable. Something else just occurred to me: if this was at or near the top of technology at the time of its construction, WTF else was in the library at Alexandria? It's a sure bet that things such as thins were part of that repository...

Astonishing, and it makes us question just where we would be today if that library had been left intact.

Remember that precise fitting can replace precise machining!!!

and story.......