Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Scientist may have figured out the Antikythera mechanism

Ancient Greek calculating device continues to reveal secrets starts with:

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It's known as the Antikythera mechanism, a metal gear driven device found over a century ago on a sunken Roman ship, near the island of Antikythera, that for just as many years has had scientists analyzing, scratching their heads and offering suggestions as to its purpose.


Some have called the device the first analog computer; others the first mechanical computing device. Either way, the device very clearly demonstrates that the Greeks of 150 to 100 BCE knew far more about gears and calculating machines than had been thought possible just a decade or so ago.
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It appears the tool was used for predicting the location of the sun, the moon and the five known planets. Pretty cool

Here is a video of the reconstruction:

3 comments:

ProfPete said...

Henry, this is so cool! Thanks for sharing this. I love anything to do with calculating devices, and to see one invented by the Ancient Greeks is so fascinating.

Luke Holzmann said...

Wow. That is impressive and so cool! Thanks for sharing!

~Luke

Henry Cate said...

I am glad you guys enjoyed the post. A couple years I heard about the device and at that time people didn't seem to know exactly what the device did. It is pretty cool that the Greeks were able to build something so sophisticated.