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Recreating a Mysterious, 2,100-Year-Old Clock

fergus07 writes "Swiss watchmaker Hublot has created a scaled-down working replica of the ancient Antikythera mechanism. The question is — why on Earth would you want to strap one of these to your wrist? It barely tells the time, and it can't take pictures, tweet or connect to your Facebook. In fact, very few people would have the faintest idea what it is, or why you'd want one at all. But for those that do recognize its intricate gears and dials, this tiny, complex piece of machinery tells a vivid and incredible tale of gigantic scientific upheaval, of adventure and shipwreck on the high seas, of war and death."

66 of 209 comments (clear)

  1. vanity by e**(i+pi)-1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    > why on Earth would you want to strap one of these to your wrist Because here on earth, we know vanity and use status symbols to impress?

    1. Re:vanity by The+Yuckinator · · Score: 5, Informative

      Actually, yes it does...

      From TFA:

      Hublot's own working replica of the Antikythera mechanism, scaled down from shoebox size to wristwatch size, and with a built in clock circuit so it can tell the time as well as make its astronomical predictions.

    2. Re:vanity by ShavedOrangutan · · Score: 3, Insightful

      At any given moment, I can see the current time on:

      Office: desk phone, laptop, pc, wall clock, cell phone.
      Kitchen: wall phone, wall clock, microwave, stove, cell phone.
      Living room: cable box, DVD player, wall clock, cell phone.
      Bedroom: alarm clock, weather station, cell phone.
      Car: radio, satellite receiver, GPS, cell phone.

      So I can't figure out why anybody would wear a wrist watch, unless for fashion. And that makes even less sense.

      --
      Godaddy is a scam and a ripoff.
    3. Re:vanity by gstoddart · · Score: 5, Informative

      So I can't figure out why anybody would wear a wrist watch, unless for fashion. And that makes even less sense.

      Fashion is part of it. So I can tell time in meetings if there is no clock. Because it takes 2 seconds to look at my watch, and more to dig out my cell phone, so when I'm walking it comes in handy. Because there's something really beautiful about a mechanical watch with its gears exposed. Because you can get used to wearing a watch, and if you're not wearing one it can feel odd. Occasionally having an alarm comes in handy. Or a stopwatch.

      Just because it doesn't make any sense to you that doesn't mean that other people don't have reasons for wearing a watch.

      They also make more than one flavor of ice-cream, too.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    4. Re:vanity by CrispyZorro · · Score: 2

      So I can't figure out why anybody would wear a wrist watch, unless for fashion. And that makes even less sense.

      Because some people do not spend their lives indoors. Have you ever tried to look at your cell phone while riding a bike? But hey, this is slashdot. You might be one of those cell phone holster guys.

    5. Re:vanity by gstoddart · · Score: 2

      Now, yes, a watch is cool. I like the ones with all the exposed gears and perfectly machined parts that I see in magazine ads. Especially the ones with diving or aeronautical readouts that I don't understand. But is the watch cool, or is it cool because it's being worn by Sir Richard Branson or John Travolta while standing in front of a Learjet? It probably wouldn't look that good on my wrist while I'm climbing out of my Dodge.

      Well, no ... you'll never be as cool as Travolta in front of a lear jet. ;-)

      I've got watches that can tell me the timing of the tides, the phase of the moon, current altitude and temperature ... watches with nothing but the time of day ... watches that have their innards exposed ... watches in a variety of bright colors ... solar watches ... automatic (self winding) watches ... watches that sync to the atomic clock signal.

      The watches I wear to work are different from the ones I wear casually. I can wear the dressier ones casually, but a bright red G-shock in a client meeting not so much.

      My wife has a bunch of brightly colored plastic (and really rugged) watches so she can match it with what she's wearing ... she doesn't wear any other jewelry, so it's her one fashion accessory.

      It's amazing how quickly you can go from have no watches to having quite a few ... especially if you use something like Amazon to track down good buys or watches you'd just not see in a retail outlet.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    6. Re:vanity by mcgrew · · Score: 4, Insightful

      On the other hand, I can't figure out why anybody would carry a cell phone, unless for fashion.

      Dad? Is that you? When did you get a computer? I can't figure out why anyone would want a landline phone, all you can do with one is make and recieve calls, and it doesn't even work unless you're home. I don't have a landline. But my phone makes and recieves calls, texts, emails, accesses the internet, is a calandar, a calculator, a camera, a movie camera... it's a damned handy device to have.

      If you're not my 80 year old dad you must be trolling.

    7. Re:vanity by Obfuscant · · Score: 3, Informative

      That's odd, my $100 Motorola is the best phone I've owned, and I've had phones since the rotary days.

      You young whippersnapper. I remember when you had to pick up the earpiece and tap the hanger a couple of times to get Madge's attention down at central and then you'd ask to be connected.

      And before that if you wanted to talk to someone at the other end of town you walked over and did it in person. Good for your health, less stress. You wanted to talk to someone in the next city over, you waited until they invented the telegraph and sent one of those newfangled things.

      Now get off my lawn.

    8. Re:vanity by snakeplissken · · Score: 3, Funny

      wait until they invented the telegraph?

      i had to wait until horses evolved!

  2. *eyeroll* by JustAnotherIdiot · · Score: 5, Insightful

    it can't take pictures, tweet or connect to your Facebook.

    Because THAT'S what's important in a watch.

    --
    What do I know, I'm just an idiot, right?
    1. Re:*eyeroll* by Sardak · · Score: 2

      Well, how else are you to let your thousands of "friends" know that you checked your watch?

    2. Re:*eyeroll* by Abstrackt · · Score: 5, Funny

      My solution is just to loudly yell every action as I take it.

      --
      They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
  3. Ad for Fossil watches by lauterm · · Score: 2

    The ad I see at the top of the page is for Fossil watches. ;-)

    1. Re:Ad for Fossil watches by GameboyRMH · · Score: 2

      They made some cool PDA-watches that ran PalmOS in the early 2000s. I thought about buying one, but I can never come up with a good use for a computer with a screen literally the size of a postage stamp, while I'm already carrying a regular-sized PDA around...

      --
      "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
  4. Well... by esocid · · Score: 2

    Because you can. Obviously.

    --
    Absolute power corrupts absolutely. indymedia
  5. Re:This has been done before by GameboyRMH · · Score: 3, Informative

    Yep this is far from the first replica, but it's the first one I've seen made so tiny.

    --
    "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
  6. Antikythera in Lego by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting
  7. Amazing by MightyMartian · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's amazing in one respect, and sad in another. The Late Classical Greeks came so close to their own scientific revolution. If it hadn't been for the near culturally fatal effects of the Peloponnesian War, the Greeks may very well have invented science themselves. Can you imagine where we would be now if scientific methodology had fully blossomed 2,300 years ago?

    --
    The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    1. Re:Amazing by identity0 · · Score: 3, Funny

      They invented this watch, unfortunately they patented it and drove all competitors out of business before collapsing themselves ;-)

      Thankfully, 2,100 years later their patents and copyrights have expired, so we can open-source it.

      Assuming, of course, Hublot hasn't patented it themselves.

    2. Re:Amazing by alexgieg · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Way past the distant memory of peak oil and even "post oil"? Not to mention peak- and post- almost everything else industrially useful.

      But that's an incorrect historical take on the matter. To blossom a contemporaneous-like science requires, among other things, an extremely solid logical and mathematical foundation, way past what had been developed back in Ancient Greece, plus a very specific kind of world view that only developed once, under a very specific historical context. The first two aspects were advanced to the point of usefulness only during the three later centuries of (what we now call) the Middle Ages, while the third aspect required two more centuries, building upon the first two aspects. These three simply weren't available at the time.

      What doesn't mean considering the possibility isn't fun. There are some quite nice alternate history fiction on the subject out there.

      --
      Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
    3. Re:Amazing by JoshuaZ · · Score: 2

      The Peloponnesian War was not the only thing that was relevant. Keep in mind that Thales was of all the ancient Greek thinkers very arguably the one who was closest to the scientific method (in terms of combining both empirical observation and rational thinking). And Thales was one of the first. So whatever prevented a scientific revolution it was probably more subtle than that.

    4. Re:Amazing by InfiniteZero · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Well the Peloponnesian War predates this clock by about 300 years...

      But the ancient Greeks indeed came so close to the scientific and industrial revolution that it makes a fascinating fiction of alternative history. For example they even had working steam engine and railway around the same time period of the clock:

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aeolipile
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diolkos

    5. Re:Amazing by Rob+Riggs · · Score: 5, Funny

      The Greeks would have known millenia ago that Hades is not a planet!

      --
      the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
    6. Re:Amazing by ElectricTurtle · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Roman society was born from and thrived upon 'barbarity' (an ironic description considering it is a term whose Latin etymological origin meant persons/cultures who were not Roman). It was not a devolution, it was the impetus and drive of the culture which led it to a leadership role throughout the Mediterranean world. This cold pragmatism led to things like the rape of the Sabines (which was not some aberrant exception to Roman behavior, marriage rites in the earliest Roman society included ritualized kidnapping and 'free prostitution' {citation: Otto Kiefer's Sexual Life in Ancient Rome, which is not in front of me at the moment so I can't give you a page number}). In order for Rome to achieve and maintain its success it had to actively fight against human rights and equality. It fought several wars against its slaves (the Servile Wars), ruthlessly put down several populist movements (the brothers Gracchus among many, most of which probably had anti-populist ulterior motives in the end anyway), and would decimate any population in revolt.

      Rome fell not because it was brutal (as it always had been), but because it ceased to be. It had built an empire upon exceptionalism and an inhumane disregard for any opposition, and this simply could not be translated to fit the mindset of the early church as it was instituted as the state religion. It would not be until the Crusades that the clergy would succeed in bastardizing Christianity enough that it could be used as an excuse for further military brutality.

      --
      I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
    7. Re:Amazing by CRCulver · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And the dark ages wouldn't have been quite so dark if "The Church" hadn't insisted on things like Galileo being wrong about heliocentrism until nine years ago.

      Historians no longer use the term "Dark Ages" and haven't for decades. Late antiquity and the early medieval era was considerably more complicated than that oversimplification. Also, blaming Christianity for societal collapse in the Western Roman Empire ignores the fact that the Eastern Roman Empire went on for another thousand years, and if anything, it had an even greater bond between church and state.

    8. Re:Amazing by ackthpt · · Score: 2

      It would be amazing if they can get a patent on that.

      True. Prior art of 2100 years might be a small hurdle.

      --

      A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
    9. Re:Amazing by Tablizer · · Score: 2

      Slavery is another reason. There was no need to automate because they had slaves. It was a double-edged sword: slaves freed-up enough people to ponder the universe, but it also meant less value in automation. Greeks excelled at "thought science", but not so much at empirical science that required rolling up your sleeves.

    10. Re:Amazing by bodland · · Score: 2

      Yes and thankfully the rise of Christianity's mysticism in the western world...that pretty much guaranteed a large portion of humanity would maintain a firm distrust of science...to this day.

    11. Re:Amazing by linuxwolf69 · · Score: 2

      But.. but... but... they added a WATCH! So of course they should get the patent

      [/sarcasm]

    12. Re:Amazing by MightyMartian · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The Empire was already in serious decline by the time of the Edict of Milan. You can't really blame Christianity for Rome's failure. A modern understanding reveals that Rome was thumped by the first major wave of invaders out of the Asian Steppe. The economic dislocation, which came before the outright physical disruption (ie. the Huns) were too much for the Roman economy to bear. This was an Empire basically kept together through massive military spending, and thus the underlying economy had to be strong, but as that was shaken, Rome basically entered an age of reaction, rather than action, and blow after blow took it out down. Everything Rome did from that point on; Diocletian's reforms, debasement of the currency, conversion to Christianity, the filling of the Legions with German tribesmen of dubious loyalty, all amounted to stop-gate measures.

      Not that I'm defending Christianity, being an atheist myself, but I just find blaming Christianity for the failure is really a matter of putting the cart before the horse.

      --
      The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
    13. Re:Amazing by DigitalGoetz · · Score: 2

      I totally agree. My grandfather was farming in his field one day when he found some TCP/IP protocol seeds. Then a wily, young travelling salesman named Albertius Gohr came around and stole them. They never found out what happened to those seeds or where that nefarious vagabond vanished to. I suppose we'll never know. Just imagine what could have been grown from those seeds!

    14. Re:Amazing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      You might be surprised at the mathematical and logical complexity of ancient Greek thought. The logic gets more press (cf. Aristotle), and the math was sometimes looked down upon as un-philosophic and overly technical, but that doesn't mean that people weren't working on it. Archimedes, for one, is known to have asked complicated questions, and Eratosthenes has not only a prime number algorithm named after him but also managed to invent ways to measure the size of the earth. The rudiments of algebra are already in place in the Greek world, albeit not developed to what you'd find in Western Europe during the Enlightenment, and there's no knowledge of calculus, but there was room for a lot of scientific development that didn't happen. As for the world view of science, I don't see what's so specific about it: the notion that cause-effect relationships are observable is available in Epicurean poetry, and I'm not sure what else you have in mind that was available to early modern science but not to other cultures outside a narrow range of centuries in part of the West. What world view do you have in mind?

    15. Re:Amazing by mister_dave · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Not true. The church sponsored scientific discovery. In a world created by God, the laws of nature are God's laws, and worthy of study.

      The adjective 'medieval' is now a synonym for superstition and ignorance. Yet without the work of medieval scholars there could have been no Galileo, no Newton and no Scientific Revolution. In "God's Philosophers", James Hannam traces the neglected roots of modern science in the medieval world. He debunks many of the myths about the Middle Ages, showing that medieval people did not think the earth was flat, nor did Columbus 'prove' that it is a sphere. Contrary to common belief, the Inquisition burnt nobody for their science, nor was Copernicus afraid of persecution. No Pope tried to ban human dissection or the number zero. On the contrary, as Hannam reveals, the Middle Ages gave rise to staggering achievements in both science and technology: for instance, spectacles and the mechanical clock were both invented in thirteenth-century Europe. Ideas from the Far East, like printing, gunpowder and the compass, were taken further by Europeans than the Chinese had imagined possible. The compass helped Columbus to discover the New World in 1492 while printing allowed an incredible 20 million books to be produced in the first 50 years after Gutenberg published his Bible in 1455. And Hannam argues that scientific progress was often made thanks to, rather than in spite of, the influence of Christianity. Charting an epic journey through six centuries of history, "God's Philosophers" brings back to light the discoveries of neglected geniuses like John Buridan, Nicole Oresme and Thomas Bradwardine, as well as putting into context the contributions of more familiar figures like Roger Bacon, William of Ockham and St Thomas Aquinas. Besides being a thrilling history of a period of surprising invention and innovation, "God's Philosophers" reveals the debt modern science and technology owe to the supposedly 'dark' ages of medieval Europe.

      http://www.amazon.co.uk/Gods-Philosophers-Medieval-Foundations-Science/dp/1848311508/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1321560353&sr=1-1

      http://jameshannam.com/

    16. Re:Amazing by Max_W · · Score: 2

      This worker could have well be a curious weekend scientist. Talent is born in about the same rate among all layers of society.

      He could find books in a monastery. And it is not unimaginable a that he could learn to read from someone.

    17. Re:Amazing by Luyseyal · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Another commentator mentioned the economic aspect. I won't repeat what s/he said but I did want to add that the Roman economy was largely predicated on conquering territories to generate tax revenue. Why? Because the Senate had voted to exempt themselves from all taxation. As they gained more and more land, it generated less money for the treasury necessitating conquering more people.

      -l

      P.s., I don't have a citation right now.

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    18. Re:Amazing by Paracelcus · · Score: 2

      You are mistaken, they did have a "scientific revolution" the Greek world extended beyond Greece, look into the extended sphere of Greek culture, I would suggest that Syracuse on the Island of Sicily Alexandria in Egypt and all of the extended influence of Hellenism well into Roman times and it was the heavy hand of Roman bureaucratic interference and Stoic philosophy that finally brought it to a standstill!

      The things we know about are too numerous to put here, the number we have never even heard about are probably even more amazing, remember that the loss of mankind's greatest legacy of wisdom and knowledge happened when the mob burned the great library at Alexandria.

      It wasn't until the nineteenth century that we even began to equal what was lost.

      --
      I killed da wabbit -Elmer Fudd
    19. Re:Amazing by ElectricTurtle · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The Edict of Milan neither established Christianity as the state religion nor did a mark a turning point in the empire's status. The demarcation comes when Theodosius I establishes Christianity as the religion of the state, and by the way, the borders of the empire from Diocletian to Theodosius I are largely the same. It is, in fact, only after Theodosius and the sea change in Roman civic life with regard to religion that the empire itself begins to shrink. Cases can be made for systemic weakness at just about any time in Rome's history.

      You also have your history quite backward. The Huns were not an active pressure upon Rome until after its Christianization. When the Edict of Milan granted religious tolerance (not establishment), the Hunic Empire didn't even exist. By Theodosius I's time, it had barely managed to tame it's barbarian neighbors and still posed no direct threat to Rome. That came much later.

      So while there's a certain argument for correlation doesn't equal causation, the real decline of the empire did occur *after* the Christianization. Lots of seeds were sewn before then, both systemically and by some very poor decisions. As an example of the latter, the carrot of Romanization, Roman citizenship, was devalued to nothing by a double blow under Caracalla. First, it was made universal to all free men in the territories. Second, Caracalla got butthurt by the Alexandrians' mockery of him and order thousands of them slaughtered, which, if they were now truly full Roman citizens, inexcusably violated the basic tenet that no Roman citizen could be executed without trial. Roman citizenship was no longer something anybody had to seek, nor was it anything somebody would want.

      Rome could have persisted through the barbarians' rise if it would have worked with them instead of being delusional about its superiority. Alaric I who sacked Rome was in fact part of Theodosius' legions (what a coincidence, the emperor who established Christianity...), and was a mercenary for Rome until Honorius betrayed him and his Roman handler Flavius Stilicho. Because Rome broke its promise to pay Alaric and his men, and purged many mercenaries and their families whose survivors clamored to Alaric to lead them in revenge, he did so. If Rome had given the deference Alaric had asked for and not persecuted other foederati, the Western Roman Empire might have been stable enough to resist the Hunic hordes. Hypothetically.

      Either way, the important point hear is that you have your history very backwards. The most significant pressures from barbarians and the Huns specifically undeniably followed, not preceded, the establishment of Christianity within the Roman Empire.

      --
      I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
    20. Re:Amazing by swb · · Score: 2

      IIRC, it was worse than just tax revenues.

      Conquered land was what was given to soldiers as their payment. So you needed an army to conquer land, so you conquered the land and gave it to the soldiers. Now you have more land to guard, so you need a bigger army, so you need to conquer more land, so you can give it to the soldiers, and now you have more land to guard...

      Economic expansion was built on conquering foreign lands, and Europe west of Rhine is a limited amount of room, even by horse-and-cart standards, so you kind of have a cap on your expansion room. Africa was kind of limited by the Sahara, and the steppes of Asia weren't a great place for Roman heavy infantry to succeed.

      So with some kind of a limit on expansion, both in terms of geography and resources (manpower), you have something of a limit on the economy. Through in a healthy dose of corruption, an unhealthy dependence on barbarian legions & merceneries guarding your frontier, and a political system that has no good rules succession, and well, you kind of end up with the empire falling apart.

    21. Re:Amazing by Savantissimo · · Score: 2

      "there's no knowledge of calculus"
      Archimedes was actually very close to inventing integral calculus. He calculated areas, volumes and centers of mass using limits.

      The biggest thing missing from ancient math was the positional notation system using zero. The next biggest was the printing press.

      --
      "Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
  8. I love the bit of snark in the article by jandrese · · Score: 4, Funny

    It was such a technological leap that no doubt the "History" channel has already run a series of "documentaries" showing how it was built by aliens.

    It's funny because its true.

    --

    I read the internet for the articles.
  9. Re:This has been done before by DrgnDancer · · Score: 4, Informative

    The article mentions this, and has a link to it. Replicating the device is not the achievement, doing so it such a small package is. They also threw in a few extra gears so it can tell time in addition to everything else.

    --
    I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
  10. What I'd like to see by hackertourist · · Score: 2

    is a kit to build a working replica of the mechanism.

  11. RepRap Map needed by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    If it can be done in LEGO, surely we can create the RepRap CAD files to make one?

  12. You can't have one by Crudely_Indecent · · Score: 5, Informative

    Per TFA:

    The watch is a concept piece only, and will be presented at the Baselworld watch show in 2012.

    Maybe if enough people begged, they might make a production run.

    I wouldn't mind having one, but I'm not holding my breath.

    --


    "Lame" - Galaxar
    1. Re:You can't have one by GameboyRMH · · Score: 2

      You do know this watch would not cost under 5 digits right? I wouldn't be surprised if they charged $30k for it.

      --
      "When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
    2. Re:You can't have one by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      What are you? Part of the 99%?

    3. Re:You can't have one by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      You're off by about two orders of magnitude. Check the price of the much less complicated Patek Celestial. Hublot sells watches for six digits that only tell the time.

    4. Re:You can't have one by Abstrackt · · Score: 2

      There's one thing about that watch that really bothers me: it's only water resistant to 25M (~82ft). If you're going to try selling me a watch that costs more than I make in a year I'd better be able to drop that fucking thing in a volcano before it breaks.

      --
      They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
  13. Re:This has been done before by rrossman2 · · Score: 2

    and had you read the article you'd know they even mention the lego one in it

  14. Because you can by djl4570 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "why on Earth would you want to strap one of these to your wrist?" Because it's twenty percent cooler than a Rolex.

  15. Why on Earth would you want to strap one of these by sconeu · · Score: 3, Funny

    to your wrist?

    It's obvious! So that you're ready for when the evil Kythera Mechanism shows up!

    --
    General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
  16. Shame on the Author by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    If you have to ask "Why?" when talking about this project, I pity your lack of intelligence and creativity.

  17. Re:Oh noes a watch without a camera we're all doom by squidflakes · · Score: 2

    Are you mad?!?! You like the idea of naked oiled youths zipping through the aether in astervarka, possibly meeting psychic aliens and bringing them home?

    Do you really want to meet the nude dude with the Ood?

  18. A lot of nerds don't get horology... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    A lot of nerds simply don't get horology. They'll consider hand-crafted masterpieces as "junk" that your el-cheapo thinkgeek-powered watch renders useless...

    But not all nerds are like that: quite some of them also recognize true craftmanship and fine horology when they see some. I do certainly see the appeal of such a watch for people into pure mechanical watches...

  19. Really cool ... by gstoddart · · Score: 3, Interesting

    So I'm suddenly imagining an alternate "steam punk" timeline in which we had mechanisms and gears 2000 years ago. It's always amazing to see what was really known back that far.

    That's absolutely cool.

    As someone with a lot of watches, that Hublot wrist watch is a really cool timepiece. A skeleton watch with 2000 years of history to it.

    Though, as other people have pointed out, I bet this would cost a pretty penny.

    --
    Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    1. Re:Really cool ... by gstoddart · · Score: 2

      Turns out it's actually mechanisms and gears, which means it's not so alternate.

      Funny, but I meant where they had been in continuous usage for all of that time. Not something which got lost and only rediscovered "recently" (by historical measures).

      But if we'd had clockworks gears for 2000 years, I can only imagine how many cool things would have been invented centuries ago.

      --
      Lost at C:>. Found at C.
    2. Re:Really cool ... by Lumpy · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Just imagine what we lost when the idiot Christians burned the Library of Alexandria.
      Just imagine how much was lost in ideas because if stupid laws or traditions in a certain islam bible.
      Just imagine how many scientists were killed in early society in general because their ideas or understanding was greater than some monarch, and we cant have that!

      Humanity has gone out of it's way to destroy knowledge in the name of hating change. Organized political Religion (Catholic church, Radical Islam, Moonies, David Koresh, Church of the Latter Day saints, Scientology, etc....) is simply a powerful tool to help spread hate and control. None of these religions have ANY use other than to keep certain people in power and rich at the expense of others.

      Knowledge levels the playing field, therefore heads of powerful organizations go out of their way to SQUASH knowledge as it threatens their power and might.

      Not all religion does this, but the ones that have a few that benefit greatly over the control of a large group of followers does.

      --
      Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
    3. Re:Really cool ... by donscarletti · · Score: 2

      The Library of Alexandria, at least the most famous iteration was burned in a Roman siege 48BC (according to Plutach), 45 years before the birth of Jesus. If you are blaming this on Theophilus (who was a bad man in his own right), then it is only recorded that he destroyed idols where some of the surviving scrolls may of been held, it would require quite a large leap of speculation to blame the destruction of the library here.

      --
      When Argumentum ad Hominem falls short, try Argumentum ad Matrem
  20. The 'Mysterious' part. by leftover · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Chuckle at the "made by aliens" silliness as we all do, there really is a mystery to this device.
    Archimedes was more than brilliant enough to work out the math for this orrery, also to work out the design for gear tooth profiles. He had the position and influence to have access to materials and the best crafts-people of the time. But how did they actually build that thing?
    In theory an astonishingly good watchmaker could hand-file all those gears. In practice, I'm not so sure. Gears are finicky things, every single tooth must have the correct angular position, pitch diamerter and involute profile. A gear can look very pretty but simply not work with another gear. (I have made several such.) If you don't believe it, just go to a hardware store, buy a riffler file kit and some brass washers, then have at it. No microscope, no computer, no plotter. Any tools you hypothesize have to be built using the same starting conditions. It will be an educational experience. One of your observations will be that you can not see well enough to get the profile to adequately match the math for two gears to mesh smoothly.
    So the greatest mystery, for me, is: How did they make the measurements required for this work?

    --
    Bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated.
  21. come on people by circletimessquare · · Score: 2

    don't ruin the plot of the next dan brown book/ the next nicholas cage national treasure movie

    this sort of speculation does not belong in the halls of science. it belongs rightly in the realm of populist lowest common denominator pulp fiction with paranoid conspiracy theories studded throughout

    --
    intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
  22. Re:Obligatory meme butcher by Smallpond · · Score: 4, Funny

    The ad I see at the top of the page is for Fossil watches. ;-)

    Mother******* Adsense spots, how do they work?

    Actually, they use a complicated system of 84 gears ...

  23. lexical heresy by tverbeek · · Score: 2

    I'd like to take the person responsible for the first image out and punch him in the nose, for using Greek look-alike letters as substitutes for Latin letters. Using a Lambda as a capital A or a Sigma as a capital E is the worst form of international illiteracy.

    --
    http://alternatives.rzero.com/
  24. Re:Lego Version by gknoy · · Score: 2

    That was inspiring and cool. I can't wait until I can let my son near something like that and have him be interested in more than destroying it. :)

  25. Re:Who cares if it... by mcgrew · · Score: 3, Funny

    And since time flies, his sentence makes perfect sense.

    You know, I always had trouble with the phrase "time flies when you're having fun". If I'm having fun, why would I want to time flies?

  26. Greek alphabet abuse by Michael+Woodhams · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It was looking awesome until I saw the close up, where horribly misuse Greek letters according to their coincidental resemblance to Roman letters. They use a Lambda instead of an "A"! ARRRRRGHH! I'd hate myself for having that on my wrist.

    --
    Quattuor res in hoc mundo sanctae sunt: libri, liberi, libertas et liberalitas.
  27. Re:Obligatory meme butcher by Coren22 · · Score: 2

    APK has an account now?

    --
    APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?