Posted on 06/28/2024 11:50:42 PM PDT by SunkenCiv
New insights into the function of the world's oldest analog computer, the famous Antikythera mechanism, have been made with help from an unlikely source: technology developed for the study of gravitational waves...
Roughly the size of a shoebox, the device features an array of intricately tooled gears that are surprisingly complex for any innovation from the second century BCE. Over the decades, studies of the device have revealed that it likely functioned as a hand-operated computer that would have allowed its operator to predict the arrival of eclipses, as well as calculate the positions of planets over time.
Fast forward to 2020, when X-ray images of one of the device's components, which researchers identify as its calendar ring, unveiled new features that included a series of regularly spaced holes beneath the ring. Given its highly eroded state, the presence of rings could be discerned, although the number remained unclear, with estimates suggesting anywhere between 347 and 467 of the holes having once existed along this damaged portion of the device.
Now, in new research published in the Horological Journal, Glasgow researchers outline their use of a pair of statistical techniques in a new effort to refine the previously estimated number of holes that once existed in this region of the Antikythera mechanism. Applying Bayesian analysis and, notably, new techniques from gravitational wave research, the team determined that the ring likely contained 354 holes.
This is significant since the 354 holes on the device would have perfectly aligned with the Greek lunar calendar, as opposed to the Egyptian calendar's 365 holes. Based on the new analysis, the presence of 354 holes is hundreds of times more probable than the previously considered 360-hole count.
(Excerpt) Read more at thedebrief.org ...
TRS 80?
I still have one in my junk room. Big RF noise maker.
For there to e such a thing as a gravity wave, gravity would have to propagate at finite speed. It doesn’t...
Enjoyed watching clickspring on youtube build one. Amazing work. Talked about the math for the gears.
Some are becoming valuable...depending on the model. Ebay has some going for $xxx.
This one was resurrected from bone pile. I modified it to expand the memory to full capacity (64 K of Ram) without the expansion interface box.
I built the case for the floppy drives and the power supply.
It actually worked quite well. But really interfered with Ham receivers. No filtering and no shielding.
This stuff is too complex for me to digest.
I need to wait for Bidens take on this.
There’s a guy who has been machining a copy of this device, and posting it on youtube. He has mad skills.
Post 2 goes to a FR thread with an article that is very interesting. Of course it is one researcher’s opinion I suppose - but he makes sense.
When he talks about how “the text has not survived, but...”. I know with other things (science, the Bible, etc.) people from two thousand years ago will make a short reference to an earlier document, even though that earlier document no longer exists. So we know that there WAS a text, and it talked about something, even if we don’t know all of the details.
An excerpt from the link:
The designers of the Tablet [Antikythera device] were well aware of the military implications of solar and lunar eclipses.
In addition, the Antikythera Mechanism had considerable scientific, astronomical, calendrical, religious, and political usefulness. This guaranteed its widespread ownership. There must have been hundreds, if not thousands, of such computers all over the Greek world and more than one place manufacturing them.....
Ktesibios, who made gears possible in early third century BC, was a great engineering inventor whose written work disappeared. Archimedes, the greatest scientist-engineer of antiquity, perhaps of all time, improved the engineering of the gears of Ktesibios. He wrote an entire book on how to construct a mechanical universe, and the book never made it to our times....
A brief mention of an elementary astronomical device resembling the Tablet found a niche in The Alexander Romance, a popular novel about Alexander and his heroic adventures....
He goes on and on about other references to calendars and astronomy that reference gears, and even the writing of equations found on the device.
Meant to include a link in the comment above:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLZioPDnFPNsHnyxfygxA0to4RXv4_jDU2
Now they know how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall.
“There must have been hundreds, if not thousands, “
And yet, we have found none, anywhere. Not in Pompeii, not in Herculaneum, not in Ostia. Nor have we found references to their use, except for a few cryptic text references that you cite. So I am a bit skeptical.
I understand about texts but they are certainly more fragile and there would have been fewer of them. Easier to lose. These are machined metals. I acknowledge they could have been melted down but all of them?
To date, we have found more dodecahedrons than these devices. And we have no clue what they were for.
I miss our Apple IIC
Oh - just great. Another rabbit hole to go down!
“A Roman dodecahedron or Gallo-Roman dodecahedron is a small hollow object made of copper alloy which has been cast into a regular dodecahedral shape with twelve flat pentagonal faces.”
I love stuff like this - thanks!
LOL
I agree. What the forerunners may have been will probably remain unknown, seems likely that the system was prototyped module by module in wood, which is likely to be long gone.
I wonder how they turned it on?
Ever wonder or speculate what may have been destroyed in the burning of the Library of Alexandria. About 200BC and was already filled with thousands of text. And no I do not believe it was an accident as knowledge is power and the Romans did not want anyone else to have it.
Several stories of who is to blame for the burning of the library, although Julius Caesar certainly burnt some of it. I think I read somewhere that some people think it set civilization back 1000 years. I don’t know - maybe.
I have an old apple computer, but have no idea where it came from. My son was a Ham operator too and collected a lot of “stuff”.
#38 They had democrat party types back then.
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