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2,100-Year-Old Antikythera Device Recreated In Working Form
coondoggie writes "A
new working model of the mysterious 2,100-year-old astronomical calculator, dubbed the Antikythera Device, has been unveiled, incorporating the most recent discoveries announced two years ago by an international team of researchers. The new model was demonstrated by its creator, former museum curator Michael Wright, who had created an earlier model based on decades of study."
I keep asking my boss for a new machine, but apparently the quad-core boxes are reserved for managers with important work to do like using Powerpoint and surfing for softcore pornography.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
I'm prokythera, you insensitive clod.
Surprised with all the negativity. Studying cryptic machines that change the way we view technology's historical progression and after years of work crafting a working replica hardly seems worthy of scorn.
and so starts the story of Sylar, the villain watchmaker.
Thank goodness we're prepared for when the sinister Kythera device is unearthed.
It's not that the mechanism is amazing by modern standards that is interesting. It's not not even that the mechanism must have been amazing by the standards of the time when it was manufatured. It's that the mechanism is amazing by the standards of at least 1000 years after it was apparently manufactured. Historians find stuff like that interesting; sorry you're not impressed.
There's a good chance that it was a custom job made for Hipparchus, either for his lab or to impress the king.
"Hi, this is Hipparchus. I placed a custom order for an Antikythera about 8 months ago."
"Oh, we shipped that out. It looks like there was a problem with the delivery... Ah, here we go. The boat sank."
"What? I've got to present that next week!"
"I'm sorry, did you buy shipping insurance? It doesn't show here on the invoice that you paid for insurance."
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ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
It looks like Digg has invaded slashdot. Anyways, The fact that 2 millennia ago some were able to make a calculator to predict eclipses is astounding, taking into consideration the religious beliefs and the gullibility of the masses on those times.
You do realize that technology existed prior to computers, do you not? How the heck is this not technology?
Brett
I keep asking my boss for a new machine
That's crazy talk. If you keep that up you'll soon be in charge of legacy systems. No, this is not a troll!
Kythera was the name of the island it was found near, thus anti-kythera means it was found off the coast of the island.
It's what we call it, we have no idea what they would have called it.
I'd love to get one of these for my shelf or desk somewhere. I wonder if someone would make these and sell them on ThinkGeek.com? Another good question might be whether or not someone has modelled the device in OpenGL? It would make a really cool screensaver!
The Greeks and Romans had some clever inventions. The sad part is that all the efforts they did at math and engineering came to a stop, and most of it got lost during the Middle Ages. If you travel through southern Europe, you'll see several engineering works, like the Pont du Gard, Coliseum, Arles amphitheatre, etc, which had no equal a thousand years after they were built.
It's a bit frightening that any intellectual progress was stopped for a thousand years, and I wonder could it happen again?
There was an article a few months ago about this that stated that the mechanism was used to calculate Olympiads.
That was the first interpretation of the mechanism. Now the model shows that it was much more than that as it can predict eclipses and planetary positions.
As for it not being a 'computer' I disagree. There are two forms of computers, analog and digital. An analog computer is basically a measuring device like a ruler or slide rule, thermometer and so on.
The mechanism is definitely an analog computer.
The Greeks were very good at building gadgets and even extremely large hydro-mechanical machines. Most of these constructions were used in temples to simulate thunder, automatic opening and closing doors, automated movement of objects (think Temple of Doom).
Their skill was renown in the ancient world and the mechanism is a tribute to their ingenuity.
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
This page is kind of fun, showing HP's technology where they light the mechanism from lots of angles and photograph them. (Needs Java).
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
No, that gullibility part only came into effect some 500 years later, when someone convinced people that a woman could remain a virgin after giving birth to a child. This belief was formally adopted into Christian doctrine in the year 431 AD, which more or less marks the start of a thousand years when all intellectual progress in Europe stood still.
Lame.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
In 2000 years, our space faring decedents may say the same thing about space travel. "They put this space capsule on the moon and these robots on mars, it's too bad that all that intellectual progress was reversed in the 1000 years to follow".
But the technology we have today isn't really capable of space travel (look how expensive and impractical it is). These Greek and Roman inventions are the same. You can't really use that steam engine to do any work, and it is impractical to build those kind of structures with your hands or with animal power.
Today's steam engines, and internal combustion engines, on the other hand, can really make building those kind of structures possible on a large scale.
Directly and indirectly, religon has been responsible for more people dying than any other cause EVER.
I see this often, but it's just plain wrong.
Secular leaders ushering in various forms of extreme socialism managed to surpass it in a single century, and general nationalism was far ahead of it anyway.
It was true 5000 years ago. And it's still true today.
Religion was the top killer 5000 years ago? I'd love to see your sources for that.
A natural consequence of declining technology
Nature abhors a vacuum. If you are seen as ignorant savages, other people will try to invade.
A disease carried by fleas, a consequence of the abolition of the Roman habit of bathing. To take a bath one needs to undress, nakedness might lead to sex, and virginity equals holiness according to the Roman Catholic church.
You mean the same church that burned the library of Alexandria and flayed and burned alive the librarian on a Christian church altar? The same church that burned alive a man who dared to question the official scientific "truth"? The same church that forced one of the inventors of the scientific method to deny his own discoveries?
The death of the roman empire was certain before it was born. The whole empire survived on the labor of others. But by looting those other people, they were slowly destroying the source of their livelihood. They starved people to build the colosseum and their aquanauts and to supply their grand army. It was continued growth that sustained them, but once they had expanded as far as they could, the rot set in. It was only a matter of time before the barbarian hordes invaded, but Rome was long gone by that time.
This is not unlike our financial market which is basically a ponzi scheme dependent on continued growth to guarantee returns and sustain many people's needlessly lavish lifestyles. Of course it will come crashing down! Do you really think it can grow forever? There are only so many people and so many resources on the earth, and we have nowhere else to go.
Beowulf imagined a cluster of one of these!
And the only thing that can motivate them to stark rationalism is? I dont see where Atheism is the answer. If I read you right it is Faith itself and not religion that is the problem. So why not hate every faith based thing? Why chose religion for your ire?
Most people that consider themselves atheist ARE against all "faith based things" - it's just that religion is the most pervasive and damaging one in our society at present, and so is an important target. If religion were stamped out tomorrow, we would probably then be complaining primarily about horoscopes in the newspaper (they cause people to act irrationally and often to the detriment of the society around them, so while it's nowhere near as bad as religion, that would be next on my personal hit-list).
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