one of a kind
—
Metal object from swords and shields to various devices were routinely melted down for their metallic value as stone constructions were also repurposed.
A relatively specialized device would have only a few copies made for those that could afford them. That one still exists is a miracle, not an oddity.
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.