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Mystery of Ancient Calculator Finally Cracked
jcaruso writes, "It's been more than 100 years since the discovery of the 2,000-year-old Antikythera Mechanism, but researchers are only now figuring out how it works." From the article:
"Since its discovery in 1902, the Antikythera Mechanism — with its intricate and baffling system of about 30 geared wheels — has been an enigma... During the last 50 years, researchers have identified various astronomical and calendar functions, including gears that mimic the movement of the sun and moon. But it has taken some of the most advanced technology of the 21st century to decipher during the past year the most advanced technology of the 1st century B.C."
Did it run Linux?
liqbase
Remember folks, always document your calculators.
Haida Manga
You whippersnappers got this fancy Antikythera thing... I used to have only abacus back then. Talk about being spoiled!
But it has taken some of the most advanced technology of the 21st century to decipher during the past year the most advanced technology of the 1st century B.C."Maybe in 2000 years we'll have the technology to decode that sentence!
So is there enough information to reverse engineer it? RowanYote
Don't throw out the instructions; archaeologists from the 40th century might need them.
On the serious side, though... How much of our stuff will be unusable only 200 years from now?
Absolutely nothing new in this article, except that the latest team are going to be releasing their findings soon. Basically, it's a page filler, some entertainment, not news at all.
Really, we need a new word, for news which isn't functional information, but just amusing/entertaining.
I wish they'd bloody well get round to publishing the full translation of the text, though!
Some archeologists suggest that the people who used this calculator, actually tried to build a Beowulf cluster out of these, but were unable to because Beowulf wasn't born yet.
Goes to show how stupid we are with the most advanced tech.
""It's been more than 100 years since the discovery of the 2,000-year-old Antikythera Mechanism, but researchers are only now figuring out how it works.""
Hey! All you Jefferson "Light my Tapir" guys. Pay attention.
I'm sure at the lab it went something like this...
'Hey professor Roy, have you figured out how that ancient calculator works yet?'
'Well no.. eh heh... It's sort of a mystery.. Those olden days people were a lot more cleaver than we gave them credit for. I think we might have to change our hypothesis'
'ARE YOU INSANE?! We'll be a laughing stock! I can imagine the headlines now... "Scientists Change Hypothesis: Community Laughs at Expense".. I can't go through that again! You remember the Stone Henge fiasco?! The Bloody Scots threatened to raise Fingal!!'
'...I'll get my gun'
Actually this story is a little old, people have had the Antikythera device scoped out for a couple of years now. It's a sort of geared astrolabe using an epicyclic model (an astronomical paradigm adopted in Ptolomy's ptime) and the parts inside the corroded find were derived by some good ol'fashioned NMI scanning.
An astrolabe is basically a clock -- an analogue computer that correlates time, star position and latitude. Look 'em up -- they're beautiful instruments and very logically constructed. Each point indicates a star, the off-centre circles (al'mucanthers) are the projections of the celestial latitudes from the polar axis (think of a bunch of hoops on one spindle of a Tower of Hanoi model, then crank the spindle off the perpendicular by a few degrees, to give you an idea of the projection. Light source on top, your shadow rings are the al'mucanthers). Move the star pointer to one of those circles, then read the index off the rim of the device (the Mater). Because of their simplicity and elegance (the mathematical model, not the construction!) they were used up until Columbus' time. If the Antikythera device had been a better predictor, we might well have seen more of them. And a lot more gears. The only thing we still use from the development of the astrolabe today is the flat head screw, seen on one model in 1565.
Do not mock my vision of impractical footwear
They should have given it to SG1. Dr. Jackson would have figured it out in no time, and they would have used to save the Earth from a far more technologically advanced enemy.
I find that 'shit' is a rather appropriate word.
I agree not to leave this thing lying around for people to discover in 2000 years time. I agree not to reverse engineer this device......
Engineering is the art of compromise.
It should be released for the abacus soon as well.
Linux violates 235 Microsoft patents.
Some call it "infotainment."
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
This just goes to show why documentation is so important. Kids, when you want your CoolWare 1.3.37 still to be in use 2000 years from now...document it!
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
...they're only just now figuring out a highly complex bit of machinery from the time when humans were supposedly about 'as dumb as teh average ape'. Yeah right. This fits right in with the Biblical account of the flood - humans have always been highly-intelligent beings (come on you humanists, how does this not appeal?) and all they've been lacking after the flood is the right materials, knowledge, and man-power to create great civilizations. After all, how would you feel if just you and your family were dumped into a post-apocalyptic world with the bare essentials? I thought as much. And no, you wouldn't be living in a condo either. If you DID have a portable two-man tent it'd break down very quickly (relatively speaking) and nothing would be left afterwards, though that highly complex gadget you just couldn't do without manages to survive until those silly people way in the future decide to try and figure it out.
heh.. lots of nice pics and write-up here
CALCULATORS! Who ever saw that one coming a lightyear away?
Greek Pizza that is
A time machine!
But it has taken some of the most advanced technology of the 21st century to decipher during the past year the most advanced technology of the 1st century B.C.
To pull out the old quote, "It is twice as difficult to debug a program as to write it. Therefore, if you put all of your creativity and effort into writing the program, you are not smart enough to debug it."
Without any information even about what it's supposed to do, beyond being a series of gears, without knowing if it's even a fragment of a larger whole - or even knowing if it actually worked for the intended process (or was the ancient equivalent of a buggy program), that makes for quite a challenge.
I'm guessing, in the future, a massively advanced civilization that came across the ones and zeroes of Internet Explorer, without the O.S., without info about HTTP, without Windows or a computer based off that comical silicon technology they've only found fragments of, they wouldn't be able to figure it out either.
Yes, but is it Turing complete?
Does anyone else need convincing that comments might not be a waste of time?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Properly document your hardware!
"He declines to be specific about what the writing says."
... so they figure all this out, and then they keep the writing secret? What's up with that.
WTF
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
And what was true then which is also true today is that little device gave someone absolute job security - along with a middle manager to go along with it. Surely there is enough material here to do a "ye olde Dilbert" strip. Documentation - bah, keep it minimal, make sure you need to be employed since there isn't anyone on earth capable of maintaining it;)
Slide rules: very few still in use today, but they were very important from 1620's (when they were invented) until the 1970/1980s -- 350 years.
Now, a calculator older than 5 years is a historical curiosity (although I still use a 15-year old calculator on a day-to-day basis).
What we're seeing is a shortened lifetime for calculators, software, etc. which probably makes documentation less important (excpet for historical curiosity). You would not realisticly expect any software / device you design now to be in use 350 or 2000 years from now.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
1) Astrological & Calendar functions
2) Found on a shipwreck
I get the feeling it was just a complicated compass.
Wanna fight ? Bend over, stick your head up your ass, and fight for air.
If it took them this long to reverse-engineer an ancient calculator with 30 gears, imagine how long it's gonna take them to reverse engineer that crashed alien ship in Area 51.
No wonder they're keeping everyone out- they're embarrassed.
When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
I find it amusing.
/. appear to espouse the view that everyone before the middle-ages thought the earth was flat. Now granted - the rotation of planets around a common star doesn't necessarily imply the understanding of rotation of a non-flat planet but as soon as you consider other planets rising and setting you're going to start getting some major clues ... really, we've not developed that much.
This is a heliocentric astrolabe style device from about 80BC; an advance from geocentric designs. Yet most people on
I guess at 1:43am I'm easily amused!
(Granted their calendar would register '1st century BC' at somewhere between year 3000 and year 4000, at a random guess.)
Doesn't this thing remind anyone of the countless ancient artifacts we've seen in movies that are expressly designed to summon some evil force (the devil, elder gods, pokemon, etc.) to the Earth to destroy or enslave mankind forever? Should we really be playing around with this thing?
Pictures and Images to a working unit can be found here
The reports of strange lights emanating from the lab were merely energy discharges from the material under the effects of the x-ray analysis, which is quite normal actually. Unfounded rumors of strange demonic figures running amok in the complex were likewise nothing more than a mischievous prank by a few of the overworked scientists who took a joke a bit too far. The security forces stationed around the building are merely there to keep pesky reporters from spoiling next-week's release. Any sounds which appear to be gunfire are simply sonic gas bubbles popping from out of the high tech equipment. So everything is completely under control, no need to worry.
Clickety Click
Given that we know only as much about such ancient times by the encrusted ruins we find, how do we know that this was thier most advanced?? Ive read about the roman factories recently that gives me the impression we really don't know much more than what most og us have seen in Spartacus.
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
It is nothing compared to the constant "I love WII curse the PS3" article that keeps getting posted over and over again.
...they were the ancestors of C programmers, as it was indeed documented but only in obscure comments embedded in the code.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
... is this story doing in Network World???
1. Understand how this works
:)
2. Write an emulator for it
3. Think of ways to parallelize
4. Try it out in software
5. If it works, build all the hardware
Tada, here you go, a loosely-defined "cluster".
I love moderators who blindly moderate informative. The site passes several hidden fields to the x.cgi script. Here is a working URL. http://www.networkworld.com/cgi-bin/mailto/x.cgi?p agetosend=/export/home/httpd/htdocs/news/2006/1127 06-antikythera-slides.html
Did it suffer from Y2K problems? Perhaps Y(zero)K problems.
BESURETODRINKYOUROVALTINE
Netcraft confirms it... Antikythera Mechanisms are dying!
Fascism starts when the efficiency of the government becomes more important than the rights of the people.
... had the Library of Alexandria not been sacked, would we still have the instruction booklet for this thingy?
Really, we need a new word, for news which isn't functional information, but just amusing/entertaining.
Amews?
Send email from the afterlife! Write your e-will at Dead Man's Switch.
They found 1+1=2? Scary enough, the proof for 1+1=2 is a two-page proof.
Be among the first to play Dvke Nvkem Forever, schedvled for release on the Antikythera Mechanism in 78 BC! Pre-order today!
have already started a patents-infringment case
So does this mean that two millennia from now that humans, or the robots that take over from them, will spend a century figuring out CALC.EXE?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Would that not be a clear point of previous art?
Also I thought that reverese engineering was heavily frowned upon.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
It must have taken some impressive genius (Or geniuses) to build it in 1st century BC.
Its amazing how ancient civilizations, had the creativity to develop custom numerical systems, that aproximated complex natural systems, with an accuracy that was surpassed only in the last centuries by our occidental culture
s _Mayas.pdf) that its totally integrated with his numerical astronomical time system...
For example the predictive maya table of Solar and Lunar Eclipses (http://tzolkinhaab.googlepages.com/Tabla_Eclipse
Even more wonderfull, its the simplicity how were defined the time units from the visible planets trought (in equivalent modern concepts) sampling from a (clock signal) basic serie derived of the combination of two counting numeric systems (base 13 and base 20)
On the dark side of the Moon, or the marked side of the dune?
And all these years I thought is was a "windy day in Arizona"....
Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
OK, so I'm in pedantic mode here but shouldn't it be "last century B.C." instead of "1st century B.C."?
After all, "1st century B.C." is the century the world started. Tricky to get that half right to say the least. And if we take the starting of the universe into consideration it sort of gets hopeles.
I hadn't the slightest objection to his spending his time planning massacres for the bourgeoisie... (P.G. Wodehouse)
It's going to take a lot longer than that for people to figure out some of the code I've written.
Warranty void if seal is removed
...you don't ITFM (include the f.. manual).
Oh, wait a minute...
"If god did not exist, it would be necessary to invent him" --Voltaire
Worth getting on DVD IMHO, it still makes me laugh :-)
Insert
on this slide http://www.networkworld.com/graphics/2006/Antikyth era_Image3.jpg
I hope it wasn't an ancient encryption device. There's nothing like being convicted of a felony for figuring out how something works...
I didn't see any astronauts, but I have been through the footage frame by frame and while it definately appears to be a splice of several recordings, Micheal Jackson is actually doing the moonwalk.
When can I get my working replica? I'm thinking a nice cherry wood case, with some polished nickel gears would look bad-ass on my desk.
Ingredients: Turkey, Mechanically Separated Turkey, Water, Salt, Flavour.
So if you read TFA all you get to find out new is that, using a neat x-ray imaging technique, researchers found a how-to/what-for manual etched onto one of the bronze plates but won't tell the public what's in it.
/.
Lame,
wasting my time and getting me all excited like that.
...Did anyone bother to patent this thing yet?
Imagine a Beowulf cluster of these!
Netcraft says Antithykera Mechanisms are dying.....
Does it have any Y0K rollover problems?
Is the OS written by Linus?
Does it run Windows?
Did the Romans and Greeks do any Case Mods for this?
Was sinking the boat the first Denial of Service attack?
Users fail to upgrade to Antithykera 2.0 from Abacus 1.0!
Antithykera Positioning System receiver fails to replace Astrolabe due to lack of satellite coverage...
Some (but not all) of these are elsewhere
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Pluto is a Roman god, therefore all the controversy about whether it's a planet or not is their fault.
It uses seven symbols and activates a wormhole to another planet across the galaxy.
Weird!