Posted on 05/02/2009 6:23:53 PM PDT by Maelstorm
A little more than a century ago, in the year 1900, some Aegean sponge divers stopped on the barren Greek islet of Antikythera, between Crete and Greece, to seek shelter from a fierce storm.
After things had calmed, they continued diving in the relatively shallow waters nearby and happened upon an ancient Roman shipwreck that contained confiscated Greek treasures of bronze and marble statues, jewelry, glassware and even a bronze throne.
Also among the artifacts was what appeared to be a corroded lump of rock that, for some unknown reason, was dumped into a crate during the 10-month salvage recovery by the government of Greece.
The container ended up in storage within the courtyard at the National Archaeological Museum in Athens. And there it sat for months and months.
When the rocky mass finally cracked open, apparently on its own, everyone there was astonished by what was revealed. What they saw in the remains were traces of gearwheels, ancient Greek inscriptions and circular scales that were precisely marked.
Careful research since then has shown that the "Antikythera Mechanism," as it later became known, was a relic from the ancient past. Further, before this discovery, not one single gearwheel, pointer or scale had been found from antiquity, making this finding said to be unique in all of history.
What was it? And what purpose did it serve?
Thanks to dedicated researchers over the past four or five decades and to a journalist who shares kindred passions, we now have some plausible explanations for its existence and inadvertent sighting. And among these considerations has materialized the elephant in the room: Could this more than 2,000-year-old contraption be construed as the first computer?
I came across this absorbing tale of discovery in an article in December's "New Scientist" magazine. The author of the piece is science and history writer Jo Marchant, who abridged much of the narrative's complexities in the post. She also is the author of the book, "Decoding the Heavens," which gives the full-blown version with its many ramifications.
From the conclusions of the recent researchers, Marchant thinks that we can get a pretty good idea of what this ancient mechanism did.
"It turns out that it was a hand-wound clockwork device used to calculate the motions of the sun, moon and planets as seen from Earth, as well as predict solar and lunar eclipses," she wrote in the magazine.
For many years, a number of scholars thought the discovery was a hoax.
Others postulated that perhaps a more modern ship had dropped its cargo on the exact site by accident.
The studies of the past few decades, however, have revealed that the device's inscriptions and gear-wheel technology, among other things, point to an origin around 100 B.C., possibly in Rhodes, Marchant intimates.
The "Antikythera Mechanism" "was enclosed in a wooden box and driven by a handle on the side," described Marchant in the article. "As the user turned the handle, they could wind backward or forward in time to see the positions of heavenly bodies at any chosen moment," she noted.
It likely is no coincidence that the mathematician, scientist and inventor, Archimedes of Syracuse (Sicily), lived in the area just over a century before the device's origin. Archimedes is said to have pioneered the applications of gear-wheels, and his father was an astronomer.
Additionally, Hipparchus of Rhodes, who was born just 22 years after Archimedes died, was a leading astronomer of the time. His influence is said to be felt in the mechanism as well.
The many twists and turns in the device's journey through southeast Europe and the western edge of Asia Minor on its way to the bottom of the sea, and the interrelationships of the key players all can be followed in more detail in Marchant's magazine article.
An online version is available at www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026861.600-archimedes-and-the-2000yearold-computer--.html.
A working replica of the "Antikythera Mechanism" has been constructed by former London Science Museum curator, Michael Wright. It functions perfectly.
So is the "Antikythera Mechanism" an ancient predecessor of the computer you use? Perhaps yes. And, then again, perhaps no.
What we do know is that almost two millennia passed between "Antikythera" and Charles Babbage's "difference engine," begun in 1822 but never completed. What was constructed weighed 15 tons and had 25,000 parts — a monstrosity compared to the "mechanism." A later version could mechanically calculate mathematical results to 31 digits (more than today's pocket calculators).
Later, from punch-card machines in the 1930s, steadily improving technology has given us today's desktop and laptop. It may be up to you, however, to come to your own conclusion as to whether or not there's a relational connection between the ancient mechanism and today's digital dandies.
Yep I agree on that!The old timers had an eye for woman.
Yup. Who says pretty girls can’t be Ubergeeks? Hedy certainly was.
LOL!
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Thanks nralife. Believe it or not, there have been a few other topics about this interesting piece of ancient technology. I've posted most of them above. |
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Nevertheless, the Antikythera Mechanism suggests both the sophistication of Greek science and technology and that generations of potential technical and material progress were forfeited through lack of institutions to carry them forward from one generation to the next.
The university, a creation of the Renaissance, made the preservation, development, and dissemination of knowledge an institutional imperative. Just as important, in the 18th Century, businessmen and investors became willing to fund the development of technology for the sake of profit through sales of new mechanical devices.
Taking a broader view of the matter, due to the limitations of ancient societies, the Antikythera Mechanism was an isolated bit of genius with no progeny and no business case. It took the creation of universities and modern capitalism to make the technological revolution of the modern world.
Tesla was a smart guy, but there were others
In 1936, Zuse made a mechanical calculator called the Z1, the first binary computer. Zuse used it to explore several groundbreaking technologies in calculator development: floating-point arithmetic, high-capacity memory and modules or relays operating on the yes/no principle. Zuse’s ideas, not fully implemented in the Z1, succeeded more with each Z prototype.
In 1939, Zuse completed the Z2, the first fully functioning electro-mechanical computer.
http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa050298.htm
and in 1937 - Iowa State Colleges John Vincent Atanasoff and Clifford Berry begin work on creating the binary-based ABC (Atanasoft-Berry Computer). Considered by most to be the first electronic digital computer. An interesting side note, these fellows were HAM operators. didahdidahdidah.
http://www.computerhope.com/history/190040.htm
And in 1939 George Stibitz completes the Complex Number Calculator capable of adding, subtracting, multiplying and dividing complex numbers. This device provides a foundation for digital computers.
Then things start to get busy...
This is all Greek history and some contemporary Persians would dispute or negate the Grecians.
. . . or, with an earlier start, we might have terraformed Mars by now.
It was an idea for frequency hopping that Heddy helped come up with. A sort of mechanical disc contraption that worked kinda like the rotating platter in a wind up music box.
Electrical contact would vary according to what pins made contact through holes in the plate as it moved. I suppose the contacts changed inductance or capacitance to effect an automatic change of frequency.
A really great idea, but the problem of synchronization between two setups was what kept it from being practical at the time.
Also, the idea was not useful to get through jamming equipment as the jammers of the day could cover a wide spectrum easily.
Changing frequencies in an attempt to limit a listeners ability to intercept your communications was used in WW1...but it was a poor attempt to do it manually according to a pre arranged pattern. It just befuddled the listener for a short while...just long enough for them to note all the frequencies and have multiple receivers going.
The art of electronic communications and how to encrypt data traffic and also send false data to the enemy first came about in the 1860’s as civil war telegraphers strung many hundreds of miles of enameled wire through the woods and used keys and sounders to communicate. Often the enemy was tapped in and listening so they used simple codes and sent plenty of false traffic. Some of the telegraphers were just boys...some as young as 12.
Something like this:
Reminds me of a program I once saw on the inventions of Hero of Alexandria (1st century BC) http://www.tmth.edu.gr/en/aet/5/55.html
http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Hero_of_Alexandria
Or the series Longitude -about the perfection of the maritime clock http://www.amazon.com/Longitude-VHS-Jonathan-Coy/dp/B00004U2K0
Hook it up to the internet and make it hum.
Yes, but Tesla was working decades ahead of these others.
Good Point, She was not destroyed in battle, but in atomic tests.. We had the New Jersey and Missouri in Long Beach.
I saw the analog computers and command center in the USS Massachusetts and it was amazing. The CIC was underneath a 5” thick Armor deck.
“The last combat action for the analog rangekeepers, at least for the US Navy, was in the 1991 Persian Gulf War[13] when the rangekeepers on the Iowa-class battleships directed their last rounds in combat.”
No wonder my parents wouldn't let me have a computer in my bedroom when I wuz a kid.
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