Posted on 01/11/2015 1:41:07 AM PST by SunkenCiv
"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 time when scientific traditions from multiple cultures were coming together to create a new view of the cosmos...
Greek sponge divers stumbled across the wreck of the Roman galley in 1900, after being blown off course and taking shelter in the lee of the tiny island north of Crete. During underwater excavations the next year, they hauled up one of the richest bounties of Greek artifacts ever uncovered -- but one diver died and two others were crippled from working at depths of up to 200 feet.
French explorer Jacques Cousteau visited the site in the 1950s and 1970s, using an underwater vacuum to suck up sediment and reveal buried objects.
Scientists think the ship was a merchant vessel that foundered around 60 B.C.
Archaeologists eventually identified more than 80 corroded fragments believed to be part of the Antikythera Mechanism, including the shoebox-size piece with dials and gears clearly visible on the surface.
The real breakthrough in understanding came in 2005, when a team of scientists used X-ray tomography to peer through the encrusted metal and reveal the layers of gears inside. Digital techniques yielded the first sharp images of the inscriptions on the dials and casings.
(Excerpt) Read more at phys.org ...
Any multiple of five or six would also work, Greeks knew their geometry. To hold it together, they used rivets, and/or the shafts themselves with the protruding end peened over. The state the thing is in (80+ fragments and apparent parts missing) makes me wonder if this one was being shipped as scrap, a common practice then as now.
mark for later
That’s interesting, but the fact is, they had very little folklore about local stuff because neither they nor their ancestors stayed in one place, and killed or drove out their predecessors.
...or ballast.
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