Good article. There was another, more superficial article from the NY Times posted here earlier today, but this one goes into a lot more detail.
[Yes, I clearly remember seeing this machine while I (Cicero) was studying in Rhodes.]
"But I'm also interested in finding the answer to a more perplexing question — once the technology arose, where did it go to?"
Later in the article one answer is suggested--the ancient world had slaves, so it didn't need labor saving machinery. But why did Europe gradually abolish the institution of slavery? The answer is Christianity. The Bible does not forbid slavery, but it says that in the eyes of God all men are precious, whether Jew or Greek, slave or free. So the internal logic of Christianity led toward freedom and equality.
The best writer on science in the middle ages is Lynn Thorndike. In several books he also credits Christianity--in fact mostly the Benedictines and Cistercians--for the tremendous advances in science and technology that took place over the course of the middle ages.
The Romans had the water wheel, but mills for grinding flour were not developed until the middle ages. The Greeks and Romans had these machines, but they were curiosities for the elite, not adopted into the general culture. That's why they were invented but never really made proper use of. It took a Christian vision, drawing upon the discoveries of the Greeks and Romans, to see things in a new way and put them to practical use for human advancement.
I'm interested in the etymology of this term.
The LSJ dictionary gives
Kythe^ra as "Hermesian." Hmmm...pertaining to Hermes? The winged messenger god, maybe patron god of time?
The other possibility I see here is Cythereia, a surname of Aphrodite....the device tracked Venus perhaps?