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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."
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?
Just makes me think. If it's this hard to figure out what a geared mechanism does, how hard is it going to be for a hypethetical future generation discovering a computer to figure out what the heck it was for?
If we all get wiped out by a comet or something and humanity has to start from scratch would we eventually end up using silicon? Or would we come up with a biological solution (like the human brain)? It's cool to think about.
Maybe we've already dug up things that are more advanced than what we have but we're too primitive to recoginize what it is.
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!
Because it's kind of hard to read, even if you know Greek. Quite a lot of work needs to be done to get the text transcribed fully, even if parts of it are easy to read. Have you looked at the third image in the slide show? Could you make an accurate transcription of the text shown?
FWIW, I can read Greek, but all I can make out is some references to a "square showing a given" something, some numbers, and something about moving some bits of the mechanism but not others. The third line's got some words in it but I can't fit them together without context.
Pictures and Images to a working unit can be found here
... had the Library of Alexandria not been sacked, would we still have the instruction booklet for this thingy?
'Linus' is already a Roman name - from the Greek 'Linos'. According to many theologians, the second Pope was one Saint Linus.
-- Ed Avis ed@membled.com