[blam]

I'll look around for some more pictures.

[Williams]

The existence of "modern" metal gears at that time seems strange.

[blam]

GGG Ping.

Reconstruction

[ClearCase_guy]

The History Channel did a good job on this. "Gears from the Greeks" by De Solla Price is a fascinating book, even if he didn't get it quite right.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Blam. Two similar topics:

Did The Ancient Greeks Make A Computer?
An Article | 1977 | Lionel Casson
Posted on 11/01/2003 12:21:03 PM EST by Holly_P
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1012790/posts

The Antikythera Mechanism: Physical and Intellectual Salvage from the 1st Century B.C.
USNA Eleventh Naval History Symposium | 1995 | Rob S. Rice
Posted on 08/14/2004 6:01:21 PM EDT by SunkenCiv
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-chat/1191651/posts

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks Blam. A ping, because it has been a while, and perhaps 200 people have joined since then.

To all -- please ping me to other topics which are appropriate for the GGG list. Thanks.

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[SunkenCiv]

Antikythera search:

Google

[A. Pole]

Amazing

[Nachoman]

Since so little of the mechanism survives, some guesswork is unavoidable

This never seems to bother anthropologists.

[Southack]

It's not entirely surprising. For one thing, Archimedes built some amazing mechanical weapons back then (as well as calculated mass and put "leverage" into scientific context).

For another, there is a **reason** that our language calls them planetary gears, historically.

[dodger]

Ah, Derek DeSolla Price ... back, so my cousin says, when the Ivy League was on top of it's game and before the PC-digressions. Derek was, I am told, a true gentleman scholar (and here, not entirely wrong).

[SunkenCiv]

Interestingly enough, somewhere along the line I read that a machine very like this one -- and perhaps this very machine -- was described by a contemporary writer. Perhaps it's quoted in one of the similar topics.

[SunkenCiv]

Also... a while back I picked up Jacques Cousteau's old stuff on DVD. Boy, that guy sure did harp about how humans were going to ensure their own extinction because they raped the environment. What a whiner.

Anyway, one of the shows shows them diving on the same wreck (if memory serves -- I don't have the disks here or I'd check) and coming up with (for example) a missing piece of a small bronze statue recovered 100 years ago. S'cool. The Antikythera mechanism is shown on museum display.

[Professional Engineer]

A true geezer geek device.

[SunkenCiv]

Revealed: world's oldest computer
by Helena Smith
The Observer
Sunday August 20, 2006

It looks like a heap of rubbish, feels like flaky pastry and has been linked to aliens. For decades, scientists have puzzled over the complex collection of cogs, wheels and dials seen as the most sophisticated object from antiquity, writes Helena Smith. But 102 years after the discovery of the calcium-encrusted bronze mechanism on the ocean floor, hidden inscriptions show that it is the world's oldest computer, used to map the motions of the sun, moon and planets... Known as the Antikythera mechanism and made before the birth of Christ, the instrument was found by sponge divers amid the wreckage of a cargo ship that sunk off the tiny island of Antikythera in 80BC. To date, no other appears to have survived... For years scholars had surmised that the object was an astronomical showpiece, navigational instrument or rich man's toy. The Roman Cicero described the device as being for 'after-dinner entertainment'. But many experts say it could change how the history of science is written. 'In many ways, it was the first analogue computer,' said Professor Theodosios Tassios of the National Technical University of Athens. 'It will change the way we look at the ancients' technological achievements.'

[SunkenCiv]

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