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Linguistic Clue Pushes Back Origin of "World's Oldest Computer"
Calopteryx points out a piece at New Scientist which suggests that the Antikythera mechanism may be even older than previously thought; an ancient Greek word on of the device's dials suggests the device may date to the early second century BC. The article is accompanied by a great animation of its (deduced) workings, too.
Watch, next thing you know that dial is how they got their ancient IP addresses.
"They confiscated everything, even the stuff we didn't steal!"
Please read this before posting.
Oh shucks, too late.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
I disagree with you.
This not a free form stick and sand device.
It's a mechanical device that deterministically computes planetary data based on user input.
It's a highly specialized computer in my book.
My gut says someone is already thinking of adding this device as part of a movie plot. sigh...
A computer? That's the hot chick who crunches numbers for me.
I sometimes wonder what the world would look like today if the Catholic church hadn't held back scientific research in the middle ages and killed the best and brightest minds..
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
This device is awesome and gives you a glimpse what the "Ancients" ("Stargate" pun intended) already knew and how much of our history is lost. Imagine for a moment if there had been an uninterrupted development from the knowledge that went into this little box for 2000 years. Makes Steling/Gibbons tale of "The Difference Engine" pale by comparison. I read a fascinating book about the discovery and science of this mechanism ("Decoding the Heavens": http://www.decodingtheheavens.com/) and it ist is truly mind boggling how much skill went into this box, 1500 years before we "modern" people build anything remotely as sophisticated. While reading the book I had some trouble to imagine all the wheels and gears described and the full res video is very helpful (can be found here: http://www.mogi-vice.com/Antikythera/Antikythera-it.html (italian)). Very well done, indeed, Signore!.
Didn't I just see this on 'Warehouse 13'?
*Spoiler Warning!!!*
Hint:
He loved puzzles, look for secret compartments!
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
It's as much of a "computer" as my Casio G-Shock is. The Casio is microprocessor controlled so you shouldn't have a problem with accepting that.
No sig today...
The prior devices and knowledge also come to mind. The crafts, arts, maths and sciences leading up to this must have included similar devices, possibly going back much farther. As well, other fine geared devices are likely.. I wonder what other similar mechanisms would be useful in the ancient world?
Wow, cool thought!! You heard it here first:
The Baghdad Battery, another ancient mystery device which dates to almost exactly the same time as the Antikythera Mechanism, performs well enough to drive a Homopolar Motor (very cool video link). I believe that there is no actual evidence of a handle with the Antikythera Mechanism, but simply an input shaft with a coupling. If I remember correctly, one turn of the shaft advanced it one day. I'll bet that a homopolar motor could accumulate enough power over a day to drive the Antikthera device.
Now the homopolar motor in its simplicity could easily be missed as a ancient device, or its 2 useful components (wire and magnet) scavenged for another use, leaving no artifact to find. Finally, here is a variable speed homopolar motor video I know I'm synthesizing the electric motor invention.. its just so simple that its invention at that time is possible, let alone any other type of motor. And an voltage/amperage controlled speed regulator seems likewise possible.
If you read the comments, there is a hot but pointless discussion on whether this device is actually a 'computer'.
My father worked in RAE Farnbrough in the '40s and '50's. The first early 'Pilot-ACE' prototypes were developed by Manchester University and the National Physical Laboratory. Another less well known one was made for the Ministry of Defence and sent to Farnbrough for calculating things like air flow over wing profiles. The NPL director at the time seems to have had a deep distrust of computers, and the early versions were explicitly forbidden to execute conditional jumps ( IF..THEN..ELSE ). The computer would solve flow equations by shooting from the boundary conditions, and then stop. A human operator then had to press a key to instruct it to execute the jump back to the beginning of the loop to take the next iteration. I can only imagine how irritating Alan Turing must have found that - to go right to the edge of computational completeness, and then stop just short. Aaaaugh!
Arguments about who made the first computer tend to get rabid, fast, so people often define a computer as something that can make a conditions jump based on it's previous calculations, and not just like a player piano, rewinding its roll when it has detected the end. This is a nice, clear rule - either the machine can do conditional jumps or it can't - so it tends to get invoked when things get heated. The Antikythera mechanism had no need of a conditional jump. I have no doubt that the people who made it could have designed it to do so if they had wanted to, just as Charles Babbage could have done for the Difference Engine. However, in both cases, they did not, so in both cases, according to the narrow definition that requires a computer to do a conditional jump, this is a 'calculator' and not a 'computer'.
I suspect the Antikythera mechanism may have had immense value for calculating the tides and the safe dates for shipping. As such, you can imagine the ship's captain chucking it over the side in an emergency, like a U-Boat commander disposing of an Enigma machine, rather than let it be captured, and copied. Maybe this is why these devices have vanished so completely from known history.
This not a free form stick and sand device.
"GNU/Stick and Sand" has the Four Freedoms.
Squirrel!
n/t
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
As far as I know, Clive Cussler already plotted a Dirk Pitt novel around this device. Can't remember which one though, he's quite a prolific writer.
Full story in a Telegraph article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/1388038/Mysterious-gold-cones-hats-of-ancient-wizards.html
And, no it doesn't run linux but it may be possible to imagine a beowulf cluster of them.
Posts, MyBio or Sig, may contain satire, sarcasm, bolded nouns be sardonic or even witty & be Church of SD
If we define "computer" as "turing machine", then yes it is a computer.
People are using "IF-THEN-ELSE" as a touchstone for this. This is wrong. What the Antikythera machine is (if you're willing to encode the input and output digitally, which you may as well because of gear lash slop) is a Turing machine with an unwritable tape, otherwise known as an FSA (Finite State Automaton).
An FSA, since it's a Turing machine, does effectively do IF-THEN-ELSE operations. The important thing is that it is not programmable.
To put it in layman's terms, I could build a standalone computer that emulates the Antikythera, with the programming in ROM. It'll do everything the Antikythera does and vice versa, but nothing else. They are interchangeable. But mine does use IF-THEN-ELSE.
Years back people used the two phrases "Computer" and "Programmable Computer" fairly distinctly. These days the word "Programmable" has become implied, hence the confusion.
Maybe we should start saying "Nonprogrammable Computer" and "Computer" to clarify things.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
But does it run Linux?
(Don't worry; I hated typing that joke as much as you hated reading it.)
No existe.
I sometimes wonder what the world would look like today if the Romans hadn't burned down the Ancient Library of Alexandria.
It's merely a non-"Von Neumann architecture" computer. (read second paragraph)
All computers before a certain point were non-Von Neumann computers. This limited them, obviously such computers were not reprogrammable. But things like calculators of all kinds did exist. There were mechanical cash registers (even with day totals).
In theory there is no difference between what a mechanical computer can do and what our supercomputers can do. Of course, not quite at the same speed.
Those are the obvious questions. Seems pretty basic tho, gotta build one I guess. The battery charging stage @ Instructables is only used to condition the battery, it works without that, just at a lower capacity... Think Lemon/Potato Battery. The Greeks were creating electricity rubbing amber circa 600 BC, so charging is not impossible. Heck, just drive the motor backwards and it will produce current. If you compare a Leyden Jar with a Baghdad Battery, they are similar. Some illustrations show an internal asphalt plug, but others don't. Batteries fit into things so I expect some kind of holder to complete it. The "battery" clay has also been described as porous, so contact completing the circuit (battery) could be external. Ben Franklin made a simple electrostatic (no magnet needed)electric motor powered by Leyden Jars
As far as I can tell without building one and metering it, The voltage/amperage required for a homopolar motor is very small, just enough to overcome the friction of the "bearing" point, When work is used then, of course it is the force of friction + the energy extracted for work. The fabrication "hack" of sticking a magnet on a battery is not required for a homopolar motor. I believe it is using the battery to extend the magnetic field lines such that the field from the current in the wire has something to push against. An iron rod on a magnet would suffice. The wire rotor does not need to contact the magnet (stator). It only needs current flowing through it to spin, or conversely, could be built with the wire as the stator and the magnet spinning.
Why has this not been done? We have lots of better motors, batteries and so on, so why would anyone dabble in less efficient ancient devices? We regularly dismiss our past as primitive, that is why we are surprised when we truly learn of their accomplishments.
It is so easy to do that I totally will build these as fun experiments...
How does this actually date it? So what if it has a word older than the previous dating? WTH does that have to do with it. Now if it had a word newer than the estimated date then I'd say that the date has to be adjusted. But once a word is created it continues to exist forward in time so how real really is this discovery. This is hardly 1984 where the whole language was changed to suit political ends as required.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
It's the Greek word for "Eleven".....
The most important question I have about the Antikythera mechanism is: does it compute utilizing a heliocentric solar system model? If it does, then constructing a device to model the existing solar system would have given you the heliocentric answer as the most simplified solution to the heavens very much pre-Copernicus.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
You could make a description like that, but you'd be missing the point (deliberately, I suspect). The stick and sand "analogue computer" you describe depends entirely on the software in the stick-user, who must not only understand what the problem is ("I want to know what the positions of the planets was/ will be on such-and-such a date"), but also all details of how to solve the problem. Without the user having both of these software packages installed, the stick-and-sand "analogue computer" is unable to compute the solution.
In contrast, the hardware of the Antikythera mechanism embodies a method of solution, so that it's user only needs to understand the problem and how to enter it into the computer, but not the detailed method of solution.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
In contrast, the hardware of the Antikythera mechanism embodies a method of solution, so that it's user only needs to understand the problem and how to enter it into the computer, but not the detailed method of solution.
It depends entirely how you view it. The Antikythera machine is certainly a more advanced computer: the required actions for solving the problem are certainly less complex than a stick and some sand. However if you regard the stick and sand as a machine with a set of actions you must take the two are alike (you do not have to understand why you do them - you just do them): the only difference is the complexity of the instructions. Did you understand the complete reasoning behind the method of long division and multiplication when you first learnt it as school?
You do need to know more details about the method with the stick but you undoubtedly need to know a reasonable amount with the Antikythera machine as well. I see no way to define a defendable line between the Antikythera machine and a stick in the sand which would allow you to call one a computer and not the other. Both are computational tools - one is more advanced, simpler to operate but more restricted, than the other.
Logically you are correct. There is no logical distinction between (for example) Wossname's 1000-odd-strong Beowulf cluster for playing a fair amateur strength of Go and performing the same computation using a Maxwellian demon and a couple of billion atoms of hydrogen for working memory. Both, being physical devices for assisting with a computation, are computers. However, this then leaves the concept "analogue computer" as an utterly useless concept since there is no way to not argue that a pile of used condoms isn't actually an analogue computer.
One of the important uses of terminology is to distinguish between significantly different classes of object. I, for example, deliberately take mild umbrage at people who talk about the "extinction of the dinosaurs", because to me, dinosaurs are not extinct. I've just looked out of the window to see a Lesser Black-Backed dinosaur sitting on top of a street lamp and shitting on my car. I'm deliberately using (most) people's (generally) poor understanding of phylogenetics to stimulate a discussion about an interesting part of the evolution of present-day life on Earth. The distinction I describe between dinosaurs and non-dinosaurs is technically defensible and deliberately challenges many people's understanding of the relatedness of organisms.
In contrast, the way that you want to use the term "analogue computer" shows there to be no logical distinction between a cloud of hydrogen molecules combined with a valve, a stick combined with a beach, dozens of precisely machined gears combined with several support plates, and Pascal's Trisector (as Cundy & Rollett describe it ; Wikipedia has it as a geometrical theorem which can be realised as a linkage ; linkages are machines).
I'm not up to the century (maybe not even the current millennium) on the terminology of philosophical and rhetorical classification ; I think your meaning of the term "analogue computer" may be more usefully studied by asking what is it about your stick and beach or cloud of hydrogen atoms that makes them particularly designed for the problem of planetary motion (as the Antikythera Mechanism seems to be) or the trisection of angles (as Pascal's Trisector is). Were I to present you with two sticks and two beaches and assert to you the one is an analogue computer designed for the planetary motion problem, and the other an analogue computer for trisecting angles with ... how could you tell the difference. Here I think we may have the crux. An analogue computer is not a general purpose computer - it's a computer designed for a particular task and which embodies that task within it's structure ; until recently the only general purpose computers were the stick and the beach (or their technological derivatives).
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
In contrast, the way that you want to use the term "analogue computer" shows there to be no logical distinction....
Actually, if you reread my original post, I do not want to use the term that way. My argument was in fact that you you accept the Antikythera machine as a computer you also have to accept a stick in the sand - basically reductio ad absurdum.
My definition of a computer would be limited to devices capable of following a programmed series of instructions by themselves. Indeed Wikipedia says that "The ability to store and execute lists of instructions called programs makes computers extremely versatile, distinguishing them from calculators." The Antikythera machine is a calculator, not a computer.
That is one meaning of the sequence of letters that make up the word "computer" ; another, utterly valid, meaning of that same word is "a human who specialises in carrying out computations without any deep understanding of the meaning of the calculations. That definition of that meaning of "computer" is correct, but it is not the only meaning associated with that symbol. Wikipedia is perhaps not the appropriate "authority" to cite in this discussion, and Wiktionary might be better, though I see that it's range of definitions is similarly lacking.
Wiki[n]s are great, but they do tend to have biases like this. If I didn't have a lawn waving it's arms at me, I'd think about how to improve this. The article you cite doesn't really have a good grasp of the range of meaning that's associated with the word.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
That definition of that meaning of "computer" is correct
You have to allow for meanings to change with time. That might have been a common definition 50+ years ago when humans needed to do that sort of thing. However they have been replaced with machines that carry the same name. Stop someone in the highstreet and ask them what a computer is and I can just about guarentee you (unless I'm really unlucky and stop you!) that they will describe a computer as a machine. That doesn't mean that the original meaning is now wrong it just means that the most common meaning of the term has changed.
Sorry for quoting Wikipedia - I'm not particularly fond of it either - but it was top of the heap of a quick google search and is often quick and convenient.