Secrets of Antikythera Mechanism, world's oldest calculating machine, revealed

Secrets of Antikythera Mechanism, world's oldest calculating machine, revealed



The secrets of the worlds oldest calculating machine are revealed today, showing that it had dials to mark the timing of eclipses and the Olympic games.

Ever since the spectacular bronze device was salvaged from a shipwreck after its discovery in 1900 many have speculated about the uses of the mechanical calculator which was constructed long before the birth of Christ and was one of the wonders of the ancient world.

The dictionary sized crumbly lump containing corroded fragments of what is now known to be a marvellous hand cranked machine is called the 'Antikythera Mechanism' because it was discovered near the tiny island of Antikythera, between Crete and mainland Greece.

We knew that this 2,100 year-old ancient Greek mechanism calculated complex cycles of mathematical astronomy. It really surprised us to discover that it also showed the four-year cycle of ancient Greek games," reports Dr Tony Freeth of Images First, a TV company, and three academic colleagues today in the journal Nature.

"The Antikythera Mechanism is of crucial importance for the history of science and technology," he adds. " It tells us of a revolution in human thought in ancient Greece - the earliest known example of a machine for making calculations, of a machine for predicting the future."

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"The mechanism is full of surprises," says Prof Alexander Jones, Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University, "and the latest revelations for the first time establish its cultural origin."

The team believes this marvel may have been made in Syracuse in Sicily. "People may rush to make a link with the great scientist, Archimedes, who lived in Syracuse and died there in 212 BC." says Prof Jones.

"But the mechanism itself was almost certainly made many decades after he died and the most we can say is that there is a possible link with a heritage of scientific instruments that might have originated with Archimedes."

cont'd

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/earth/2008/07/30/scicalc130.xml

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In early 1901, a Greek sponge diver named Elias Stadiatos discovered the wreck of an ancient large cargo ship off Antikythera island at a depth of 42 m (138 ft) to 60 m (200 ft). Sponge divers retrieved several statues (including the famous Antikythera Ephebe, and the Philosopher) and other artifacts from the site, known as the Antikythera wreck. The mechanism itself was discovered on 17 May 1902, when archaeologist Valerios Stais noticed that a piece of rock recovered from the site had a gear wheel embedded in it. Examination revealed that the "rock" was in fact a heavily encrusted and corroded mechanism that had survived the shipwreck in three main parts, and dozens of smaller fragments. The device itself was surprisingly thin, about 33 cm (13 in) high, 17 cm (6.7 in) wide, and 9 cm (3.5 in) thick, made of bronze and originally mounted in a wooden frame (a very small part of it is still in the museum). It was inscribed with a text of over 3,000 characters, most of which have only recently been deciphered. These were part of a manual, which describes how to set up the instrument and how to use it for observations, with references to the Sun, the motion of the planets (stationary points), Aphrodite (Venus), Hermes (Mercury), and eclipses.

Jacques-Yves Cousteau visited the wreck for the last time in 1978,<4> but found no more remains of the Antikythera Mechanism. Professor Michael Edmunds of Cardiff University who led the study of the mechanism said: "This device is just extraordinary, the only thing of its kind. The design is beautiful, the astronomy is exactly right. The way the mechanics are designed just makes your jaw drop. Whoever has done this has done it extremely carefully." He added: "...in terms of historic and scarcity value, I have to regard this mechanism as being more valuable than the Mona Lisa."<5><6>

The device is displayed in the Bronze Collection of the National Archaeological Museum of Athens, accompanied by a reconstruction made and offered to the museum by Derek de Solla Price. Other reconstructions are on display at the American Computer Museum in Bozeman, Montana and the Children's Museum of Manhattan in New York.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antikythera_mechanism

We had to wait for modern technology to figure out ancient technology. Thank you for the link/info!

It's completely corroded and encrusted. A mousetrap in that condition would have required modern technology to figure out.

The mechanism is an astrolabe, and in fact is designed to calculate based on an earth-centric view of the universe.

I've always been fascinated by it, just because nobody ever really knew what it was.

Couldn't it just have been the Leap Year thing?