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Medieval calculator up for grabsUK museum seeks cash to keep a rare astrolabe in public hands. Philip Ball The British Museum needs £350,000 to secure this astrolabe. The fate of a fourteenth-century pocket calculator is hanging in the balance between museum ownership and private sale. The device is a brass astrolabe quadrant that opens a new window on the mathematical and astronomical literacy of the Middle Ages, experts say. It can tell the time from the position of the Sun, calculate the heights of tall objects, and work out the date of Easter. Found in 2005, the instrument has captivated...

Ooparts ? What are Ooparts? That stands for Out of Place Artifacts. Things that show up where they shouldn't, a piece of gold chain found in a coal seam, what appears to be a sparkplug embedded in rock that is thousands of years old and what appears to be a bullet hole in the skull of a mastodon. These things are ooparts. A Gold Thread Workmen quarrying stone near the River Tweed below Rutherford, Scotland in 1844, found a piece of gold thread embedded in the rock of the quarry eight feet below ground level. A small piece of the...

The Antikythera Mechanism Credit & Copyright: Wikipedia Explanation: What is it? It was found at the bottom of the sea aboard an ancient Greek ship. Its seeming complexity has prompted decades of study, although many of its functions remained unknown. Recent X-rays of the device have now confirmed the nature of the Antikythera mechanism, and discovered several surprising functions. The Antikythera mechanism has been discovered to be a mechanical computer of an accuracy thought impossible in 80 BC, when the ship that carried it sunk. Such sophisticated technology was not thought to be developed by humanity for another 1,000...

A 2,100-year-old clockwork machine whose remains were retrieved from a shipwreck more than a century ago has turned out to be the celestial super-computer of the ancient world. Using 21st-century technology to peer beneath the surface of the encrusted gearwheels, stunned scientists say the so-called Antikythera Mechanism could predict the ballet of the Sun and Moon over decades and calculate a lunar anomaly that would bedevil Isaac Newton himself. Built in Greece around 150-100 BC and possibly linked to the astronomer and mathematician Hipparchos, its complexity was probably unrivalled for at least a thousand years, they say. "It's beautifully designed....

The ancient Antikythera Mechanism doesn't just challenge our assumptions about technology transfer over the ages — it gives us fresh insights into history itself.

Scientists have finally demystified the incredible workings of a 2,000-year-old astronomical calculator built by ancient Greeks. A new analysis of the Antikythera Mechanism [image], a clock-like machine consisting of more than 30 precise, hand-cut bronze gears, show it to be more advanced than previously thought—so much so that nothing comparable was built for another thousand years. "This device is just extraordinary, the only thing of its kind," said study leader Mike Edmunds of Cardiff University in the UK. "The design is beautiful, the astronomy is exactly right…In terms of historical and scarcity value, I have to regard this mechanism as...

A computer in antiquity would seem to be an anachronism, like Athena ordering takeout on her cellphone. But a century ago, pieces of a strange mechanism with bronze gears and dials were recovered from an ancient shipwreck off the coast of Greece. Historians of science concluded that this was an instrument that calculated and illustrated astronomical information, particularly phases of the Moon and planetary motions, in the second century B.C. The Antikythera Mechanism, sometimes called the world’s first computer, has now been examined with the latest in high-resolution imaging systems and three-dimensional X-ray tomography. A team of British, Greek and...

LONDON (Reuters) - An ancient astronomical calculator made at the end of the 2nd century BC was amazingly accurate and more complex than any instrument for the next 1,000 years, scientists said on Wednesday. The Antikythera Mechanism is the earliest known device to contain an intricate set of gear wheels. It was retrieved from a shipwreck off the Greek island of Antikythera in 1901 but until now what it was used for has been a mystery. Although the remains are fragmented in 82 brass pieces, scientists from Britain, Greece and the United States have reconstructed a model of it using...

FOR decades, researchers have been baffled by the intricate bronze mechanism of wheels and dials created 80 years before the birth of Christ. The "Antikythera Mechanism" was discovered damaged and fragmented on the wreck of a cargo ship off the tiny Greek island of Antikythera in 1900. Advert for The Scotsman Digital Archive Now, a joint British-Greek research team has found a hidden ancient Greek inscription on the device, which it thinks could unlock the mystery. The team believes the Antikythera Mechanism may be the world's oldest computer, used by the Greeks to predict the motion of the planets. The...

The Antikythera mechanism The clockwork computer Sep 19th 2002 From The Economist print edition An ancient piece of clockwork shows the deep roots of modern technology WHEN a Greek sponge diver called Elias Stadiatos discovered the wreck of a cargo ship off the tiny island of Antikythera in 1900, it was the statues lying on the seabed that made the greatest impression on him. He returned to the surface, removed his helmet, and gabbled that he had found a heap of dead, naked women. The ship's cargo of luxury goods also included jewellery, pottery, fine furniture, wine and bronzes dating...

Ray Kurzweil will be the first guest on theoretical physicist Dr. Michio Kaku's new ("Science Fantastic") radio show, which debuts on about 90 commercial radio stations nationwide Saturday April 15 at 5:00 - 8:00 p.m., Eastern, 2:00 - 5:00 p.m. Pacific. The show is syndicated on Talk Radio Network. Kaku, the co-founder of string field theory, holds the Henry Semat Chair in Theoretical Physics at the City Univ. of New York and is the author of two international best-sellers, Hyperspace and Visions: How Science Will Revolutionize the 21st Century, and Parallel Worlds. The interview covers the Singularity, merger with intelligent...

The Antikythera mechanism was an arrangement of calibrated differential gears inscribed and configured to produce solar and lunar positions in synchronization with the calendar year. By rotating a shaft protruding from its now-disintegrated wooden case, its owner could read on its front and back dials the progressions of the lunar and synodic months over four-year cycles. He could predict the movement of heavenly bodies regardless of his local government's erratic calendar. From the accumulated inscriptions and the position of the gears and year-ring, Price deduced that the device was linked closely to Geminus of Rhodes, and had been built on...

I'd been here a couple of months, and had begun to worry about handling all the threads. Sooooo, today I grabbed all of the pages by source, grabbed the tables of links to posts to and from me, and sorted them (the easy way, well, as easy as it gets) alpha instead of chrono. Please, don't tell me that there's a way to do that automatically, or my brain will hurt.

Over the years, I have tried to collect info about odds and ends that don't fit into the standard ideas and theories about how things came to be. Doing some googling this morning, I bumped into this set of data and thought I'd post it for other Freepers amusement and comments. My own personal research related to possible pole shifts ("The HAB Theory", Alan Eckert, 1976, based on the work of Hugh Auchincloss Brown), has uncovered alot of facts that even if they do not end up supporting a pole shift dynamic, show that things are very much different from...

"The amazing thing is the mechanical engineering aspect," says James Evans, a physicist and science historian at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Wash. He is part of an international group working to crack the puzzle of the device's origins and purpose. Evans recently added a new twist with an analysis that suggests it dates to 205 B.C. -- as much as a century earlier than previously believed. If he's right, it is more likely that the Antikythera Mechanism was inspired by the work of the legendary Greek mathematician Archimedes. It would also mean the device was built at...

Syriza: The Coalition of the Radical Left, is poised to assume the reins of power Greece is once again at the center of the European Union storm. Following the failure of the Athens parliament to elect a president in late December, Syriza, aka The Coalition of the Radical Left, is poised to assume the reins of power. “The future has already begun,” party leader Alexis Tsipras, the man most likely to become Greece’s Prime Minister, told reporters as the nation prepared for the early elections constitutionally required when presidential polls fail. “You should be optimistic and happy.” The presidency is...

ATHENS, Greece — In these disastrous economic times, opening a store on tony Voukourestiou Street next to global luxury brands such as Dior and Prada is a goal many Greek fashion designers can only dream about. But despite the crippling financial crisis that has been plaguing Greece for the past six years, 35-year-old Penny Vomva opened a storefront for her designer clothing and accessories company, RIEN, on the boutique-lined thoroughfare last month. Ms. Vomva is delighted, but she also is concerned about the shifting fortunes of the Greek economy. “My line of handmade leather bags costs 180 euros to 450...

The European Union’s executive Commission said Monday that membership in the euro bloc is “irrevocable” but left it open to what extent Greece could renegotiate the terms after elections on Jan. 25. Greece’s left-wing Syriza party leads the polls ahead of the elections and is in favor of changing the conditions of the country’s international bailout deal. That would likely anger the rest of the eurozone, which has given Athens the bulk of the rescue loans. […] EU spokeswoman Annika Breidthardt said Monday that if the Greek elections call for a need to reconsider the conditions of Athens’ membership within...

It did not take long. The game is very much in play. Greek voters are being bombarded with warnings about what is at stake when they go to the polls on 25 January. There is little that is coded in these messages. When a country has been bailed out to the tune of €240bn (£187bn; $286bn) there is no such thing as non-interference in Greece's internal politics. Most of the European political establishment does not want Greece to elect the radical left party Syriza led by Alexis Tsipras. The party is currently narrowly ahead in the polls. Mr Tsipras is...