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Mystery of Ancient Calculator Finally Cracked

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the Curta-had-nothing-on-the-ancients dept.

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."

4 of 241 comments (clear)

  1. slownewsday by Toby+The+Economist · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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!

    1. Re:slownewsday by Cadallin · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Yeah, I was really disappointed. I've heard about this device before, and more detailed specifics about it would be very interesting, but this article is just a fluff piece.

  2. Re:The question on everyones lips... by LiquidCoooled · · Score: 5, Insightful

    What I find amazing about scientists is their dedication to discover and understand the past.

    If the big business (Sony/MS/Real *and* Apple) get their way all these little plastic discs and memory stones will just be pretty ornaments to our descendants.
    There will be no way to decode the data stored within.

    We will become a black hole in history (no goatse refs).

    --
    liqbase :: faster than paper
  3. Relative Difficulty by nick_davison · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.