Among all the marvels of this machine is the fact that HAND CUT teeth (assumption here) meshed so perfectly that the device worked. Think of all the gears that had to engage without jamming.
Great, thanks!
There is little doubt in my mind that there were many brilliant minds at home in ancient Greece however I doubt that they had the mechanical capability for machining such a precision device. It may have been handed on down or inherited from some highly advanced society perhaps “Atlantean’s” which had disappeared pretty much without leaving a trace. Even today with some highly precise machinery, not to mention the knowledge required to put such an object together, it would be a challenge to come up with something of this order.
You Tube Video of a Dr. Jo Marchant lecture at Darwin College University of Cambridge in which she pleasantly explains the mechanism, its history, attempts to understand it, how it was reverse engineered, and classical and later references to it, its possible source, and whether it’s technology has survived.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iv-zWbxm2lY
(Beautiful hair! She made it easy to listen the entire hour!)
Some interesting scholarship attesting to the distinctly terrestial, in fact Hellenistic origins of the mechanism. The mechanism was not at all unique, but may have been one of the better exemplars of the art:
https://www.hindawi.com/journals/jarchae/2016/8760513/
Again?
The first anti-Kythera mechanism was in 480 B.C. The exiled Spartan Damaratos advised Xerxes to take 300 ships and seize the island of Kythera. That would cause the Spartans to rush home to defend their territory and Xerxes would easily beat the rest of the Greeks. Xerxes rejected the advice. So says Herodotus.
Fascinating video at the site.........This is an amazing thing