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 ...
They are selective in what they report as news. This device was the topic of a thread on FR several months ago.
click on the link in post #60
its been the topic of several threads.
This is a truly remarkable subject because it seems we are rediscoving the past.
(it also dove tails with many PC teachings about the past falling into the ashheap.)
From 200 BC to 1800 AD is 2000 years between this ancient computer and Charles Babbage and his mechanical computer. What went wrong? Why wasn't this advanced concept developed any further? It must be that the greek-pelosi-liberals took over then too, taxing the computer-machinists out of existence...
It is amazing they had such technology then and still didn't know where Leda's third egg went to.
There was about a millenium when they trying to get technology restarted. It was called "The BlueScreen Ages."
DOH!
Actually, the geeks at slashdot have linux running on this thing.
It would be vastly preferrable for science to, as appropriate, pose its findings in a fashion which communicates the sense that "this is the best we can tell, right now, given what we presently believe that we know"; to have ideas framed less conclusively, with an implicit openness to further illumination by future discovery; less pretention and more of the honest intellectual grace that unabashedly admits, frankly, "we do not know with absolute certainty" whenever such is the case.
Of course, for such established things as F=ma, one may certainly speak with absolute authority backed by the force of uncontrovortable fact. But, in any scientific quarter where further revelation is probably to be of sustantive impact -- with the potential to radically alter the face of what we now believe that we know -- one ought eschew verbiage that pretends to such ironbound authority.
The future remains an open door; we ought speak of it as such.
"Maybe It was invented by Steveus Jobbus........"
Which means there are copies out there by Stephano Gatus.
or would that be William the Gatus ?
A significant amount of knowledge was lost to antiquity with events like the Islamic conquests and the Dark Ages.
Al Gore, you magnificent bastard!
The Antikythera device also has a differential gear mechanism. Very sophisticated engineering.
Read Canticle for Liebowitz.....
Maybe it was the control mechanism for an aeolipile.
Bush is going to Jordan to try and get the Iraq situation on the right track
That would be important good news, but goond news isn't reported.
Maybe this was the prototype, and when it failed to make it to its intended destination, plans were scrapped for going into mass production.
But it won't take long for credit to be claimed by Al Gore..aka Glutius Maximus
Wonder what programing was like in base Roman numerals.
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