Posted on 11/29/2006 11:41:47 AM PST by Alter Kaker
A computer in antiquity would seem to be an anachronism, like Athena ordering takeout on her cellphone.
But a century ago, pieces of a strange mechanism with bronze gears and dials were recovered from an ancient shipwreck off the coast of Greece. Historians of science concluded that this was an instrument that calculated and illustrated astronomical information, particularly phases of the Moon and planetary motions, in the second century B.C.
The Antikythera Mechanism, sometimes called the world’s first computer, has now been examined with the latest in high-resolution imaging systems and three-dimensional X-ray tomography. A team of British, Greek and American researchers was able to decipher many inscriptions and reconstruct the gear functions, revealing, they said, “an unexpected degree of technical sophistication for the period.”
The researchers, led by Tony Freeth and Mike G. Edmunds, both of the University of Cardiff, Wales, are reporting the results of their study in Thursday’s issue of the journal Nature.
They said their findings showed that the inscriptions related to lunar-solar motions and the gears were a mechanical representation of the irregularities of the Moon’s orbital course across the sky, as theorized by the astronomer Hipparchos. They established the date of the mechanism at 150-100 B.C.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
It's Greek, not Roman! Sheesh.
And these computers would have been all over the ancient world if he hadn't insisted on a proprietary system.
Would this ancient computer be subject to Trojan infection?
...and only his slaves could make one.............
It is Greek. NY Times are stupid.
Not if you used a Trojan condom........
got it. My bad, I saw the error and anticipated it was yet another NYT mistake.
I never thought it was you!
Ping!
It even had a "Delenda" key.
Instead of a QWERTY layout, it used the similar but now extinct SPQR keyboard.
Why now do we have two articles on this thing posted today? What's so special about this that suddenly it's back in the news?
Apparently it ran a precursor to CP/M.
Technically speaking, the device was built at the height of the Roman empire (~2nd century CE), and Greece was part of that empire.
A new article was just published in Nature, revealing it to be more complex than previously believed. Regarding the date, according to the NY Times, it's 2nd century BC, not CE.
FR does not allow Greek character or we would be able to post some real funny keyboard jokes.
Of course SOME ivory tower lunatic will condemn this because it comes from dead europeans.
It may be 2200 years old but the hard drive crashed 2198 years ago.
A new high resolution X-ray scan was just done on it. Official results are supposed to be released in the next couple of days.
I wonder how long it will be before the geeks at slashdot have Linux running on a copy of it?
agrivate a professor remind them that "CE" stand for "Christian Era."
Yeah, I noticed the dating there. Up until today all the references I found placed it in the 1st or 2nd century CE. Now, a lot of them are changing their dates: Wikipedia now puts it at 80 BCE. That indeed may be the reason for the article. Researchers may have just redated it.
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