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Ancient Astronomical Computer Decoded
slimjim8094 writes "A mechanical device from 150BC was found in a shipwreck. Upon examination with X-Rays, the device appeared to be a revolutionary computer used to calculate lunar cycles. This device "is technically more complex than any known for at least a millennium afterward." From the article
"The hand-operated mechanism, presumably used in preparing calendars for planting and harvesting and fixing religious festivals, had at least 30, possibly 37, hand-cut bronze gear-wheels, the researchers said. A pin-and-slot device connecting two gear-wheels induced variations in the representation of lunar motions according to the Hipparchos model of the Moon's elliptical orbit around Earth."
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Overly complex and tediously designed. It sounds like a prototype.
The production version probably had a sleek plastic case and LED display, but probably only supported lunar cycle calculation and none of the other farming predictors or epicycle calculators.
It was the Greek Apple, so to speak. The Grappa.
"My gears outnumbers your gears, loser!" from the ancient scroll recently found called "Gears of War".
Perhaps you should take some set theory. Astrolabes are subsets of computers, I would think. Perhaps the article is stretching the significance, but it is a device to perform calculations, like gun targeting computers, and Babbage's computational engines.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analog_Computer
I have freaks! I did something right...
What was posted earlier was a pre-story. Basically, that this latest research had finished and was going to be presented at the end of the month. It has now been presented, and this story covers the details that were not covered in the pre-story.
Just make a search on De Solla Prices diagram of the antikytheras.
Simple math that we all can understand.
The sun gear has 64 teeth.
It meshes with the smaller of a 38,48 gear pair.
The 48 meshes with the smaller of a 24,127 gear pair.
The 127 meshes with the 32 teeth of the moon gear.
The ratio of angular speeds can then be calculated as (64/38) x (48/24) x (127/32)=(254/19) = 13.36842..
which is an excellent approximation of the astronomical ratio 13.368267..
This corresponds with the Metonic cycle, in which 19 solar years correspond exactly with 235 lunations,and therefore with 254 sidereal revolutions of the Moon.
Thus. for every 19 (direct) turns of the main drive wheel; this produces 2,356/2 revolutions of the whole differential turntable, and all the gears mounted upon it.
This is just awsome. You can pin point where the moon will be located, just by turning one wheel a certain number of time, according to what year is it. Thus, you can tell what the tide will look like days, weeks, months ahead of your trip at sea.
How come this device died and disapeared for centuries? Given the Egyptians knowledge of the earths equinox, this was the key to discover America way before Colombus did.
When you look at devices like this, the precision construction of the pyramids, the alignment of Stonehenge, and some of the Aztec and Mayan engineering in North America, it's pretty clear that the "primitive" people weren't as primitive as we might think.
Even without hard mathematics, a great deal of engineering can be done with simple tools:
The interesting thing to me is that despite the varied religious and social backgrounds of the regions, every single case seemed to reserve that knowledge of basic engineering for some form of priesthood. Some say that this indicates there was a global or root religion, whether some form of Freemasonry, Kabal, Egyptian, or older religion.
Personally I think it's the obvious outgrowth of all those people living in a world that conforms to the same physical laws, properties, and geometry. No matter what language was used to describe the technique for inscribing a circle, the actual work done would have been the same.
I've even heard some people postulate that such primitive peoples "worshipped math and geometry". I suppose that's so in the largest scope, but I think it was a worship of knowledge and learning, not of mathematics per se.
It's also interesting how certain proportions and combinations of those basic shapes repeat across history and cultures. It's like we're hardwired to find those combinations comforting and familiar, no matter how they've been used.
Sinuous shapes are much less common. Only a few societies seem to have made regular use of constructs like "French curves" on a large scale, and only in more recent times. Combined with mythos of evil or powerful serpents and dragons, perhaps those symbols actually indicated rare individuals who could work with and visualize those formulas. After all, there is no denying that people working with advanced mathematics seem to intuit solutions, then prove the answer correct, or work through the details of the calculation.
Perhaps the "wizards" of old were those rare individuals, and the dragons they helped slay were actually charts and graphs predicting eclipses and such, misunderstood by peasants who saw scribblings on parchment or castle walls that they could only interpret as being pictures of some fantastical beast. :)
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.