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Understanding the Antikythera Mechanism (hackaday.com)

Posted by samzenpus on from the this-old-thing dept.

szczys writes: We attribute great thinking to ancient Greece. This is exemplified by the Antikythera Mechanism. Fragments of the mechanism were found in a shipwreck first discovered in 1900 and visited by researchers several times over the next century. It is believed to be a method of tracking the calendar and is the first known example of what are now common-yet-complicated engineering mechanisms like the differential gear. A few working reproductions have been produced and make it clear that whomever designed this had an advanced understanding of complex gear ratios and their ability to track the passage of time and celestial bodies. Last year research by two scientists suggested that the device might be much older than previously thought.

75 comments

  1. most things are older than previously thought. by turkeydance · · Score: 1

    well, things built by people, anyway. caveman cold fusion.

    1. Re:most things are older than previously thought. by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The Greeks were amazing thinkers. They also used complex wrapping of rope around poles, pulleys, and pegs to program automated plays--mechanical TV's essentially.

      Too bad they never leveraged it, probably due to the abundance of slaves.

      William Wilberforce, a UK abolitionist, may have sparked the industrial revolution more than the steam engine and technology.

      A steam engine was invented by the ancient Greeks. However, because slaves were so common then (usually captured enemies), they didn't think much about labor saving devices. Their gizmos were mostly considered show pieces, and thus there was little incentive to improve on their efficiency or utility.

      William Wilberforce's pressure on UK politics reduced slave usage, making machines a more attractive alternative, thus propelling advances in manufacturing machinery.

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
    2. Re:most things are older than previously thought. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Let's just hope the Islamic State doesn't find out about this amazing ancient technological device.

    3. Re:most things are older than previously thought. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      There's another problem with ancient society: Plato. If you read Plutarch's life of Marcellus, the Roman who beat Archimedes and Syracuse, you'll find that Platonic philosophy and its emphasis on pure mathematics had vilified those who translated mathematics (and physics) into the realm of the physical - into machines. Ancient Greeks and Romans highly prized the transcendent truths of mathematics but not their application on earth, which was the province of lesser thinkers. Plutarch makes the point that Archimedes broke with this tradition and invested himself in applying mathematics to the physical world, sinning against Platonism but creating breathtaking (and, for Marcellus and his troops, very painful) results.

      For millennia afterwards, the only legitimate application of mathematics was architecture. The Romans certainly knew how to apply math to building aqueducts, bridges, and other civil engineering projects - but these were the work of specialists, not philosophers. Not until the medieval fascination with optics did math get its application to physics, and even then it was very specialized.

      The Antikythera mechanism was not a labor-saving device, nor are steam shovels and engines and cotton gins the only kind of application of engineering principles. The real breakthrough was taking mathematics out of the hands of philosophers and making it a separate discipline without the hangups of Platonic philosophy.

    4. Re:most things are older than previously thought. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Let's just hope the Islamic State doesn't find out about this amazing ancient technological device.

      We're fucked when they realize that it is device can be used to discover Red Mercury.

    5. Re:most things are older than previously thought. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Let's just hope the Islamic State doesn't find out about this amazing ancient technological device.

      We're fucked when they realize that it is device can be used to discover Red Mercury.

      So, how soon until the R.E.D. 3 trailers hit the 'net?

    6. Re:most things are older than previously thought. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      now slaves are payed wages

    7. Re:most things are older than previously thought. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That would make sense except for one thing... AFAIU Platonic philosophy never dominated. The Athenians killed Socrates, and not much changed over the centuries that would have changed that outcome. And Platonism had plenty of competitors among the philosophical set. The Epicurean were like the opposite of the Platonists in that they elevated materialism and empiricism over the abstract.

      Stoicism was by far the more influential philosophy, even into the Roman period. And I don't think you could say that it favored or disfavored the development of agricultural or industrial engineering.

      The emergence of a math-rich architectural tradition really kind of disproves your assertion. The question is really why architecture but not industrial processes? Your theory doesn't answer that. The theory about slaves does provide a plausible answer. (Also, it's not just architecture, but abstract math also figured heavily into astronomy and map making, those I suppose map making and land surveying could be considered part of architecture and public works.)

    8. Re:most things are older than previously thought. by Elusive_Cure · · Score: 2

      Now Greek slaves have University Degrees and a minimum wage of 340 Euros. Try beating that.

      --
      Roses are red, violets are blue, most poems rhyme, but this one doesn't... ;^)
    9. Re:most things are older than previously thought. by reboot246 · · Score: 2

      I'm not saying it was aliens, but it was aliens.

      Ancient aliens!!

    10. Re:most things are older than previously thought. by gtall · · Score: 1

      Georgio!!! I was wondering when you'd show up.

    11. Re:most things are older than previously thought. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And have those wages taken away from them as "taxes"

    12. Re:most things are older than previously thought. by reboot246 · · Score: 2

      Sorry I'm late. I was having my hair done.

    13. Re:most things are older than previously thought. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's an interesting perspective that I hadn't considered before; thank you.

    14. Re: most things are older than previously thought. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      So, now extend your thinking. Why would you have a time piece on a boat? In that time period? If we found one, there were probably more. That made it back. With their abstract math, with their known world? Remember they were abstract, imaginary thinkers. Could they have been imagining the size of something?

    15. Re: most things are older than previously thought. by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      If you mean the size of the Earth, they got a good estimate of that using shadows.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    16. Re:most things are older than previously thought. by KGIII · · Score: 2

      Hmm... This is more true than you might know. I watch an obscene number of documentaries and the subjects vary greatly. One of my favorite subjects is archeology as it ties in nicely with my absolute favorite - history. Other favorites are a variety of sciences, more specifically astrophysics and astronomy.

      As of late, a recurring subject that is tangentially included is that things are turning out to be quite a bit older than we had previously thought. We're finding that ancient civilizations and their tech are much older than we'd previously believed. As we learn, we're finding out that the galaxy is older than we'd previously believed. We've been able to make further refinements and find out that the human species is older than believed. We've now determined that humans likely came to the Americas, in two separate waves, and that this happened further back in time than we'd previously believed.

      It's kind of interesting and I keep hearing it mentioned in the various documentaries that I watch. I watch them almost to the exclusion of everything else so the internet has been a great benefit to me in those regards. I've never been a fan of television and haven't really watched much (or any, really) in a very long time and haven't watched much at all since the mid-1980s. It is nice to have this as a resource and something that I truly appreciate having access to but I digress.

      If you're curious, the first wave of humans to make it (according to current evidence) to the Americas were in South America and the second group stomped across in the north. There's no evidence that the two groups ever met. Some Amerindians were able to use DNA to demonstrate this, or a portion of this, as evidence in a case to recover some remains. That particular documentary was some NOVA production and was a series about the origins of man. I've forgotten the title but I think it was something like, "Where did we come from?" (I don't watch for scholarly reasons but as passive entertainment. Learning is incidental and not my goal which means that names, dates, and specifics often are not locked in memory. It's learning by osmosis, so to speak.)

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    17. Re:most things are older than previously thought. by KGIII · · Score: 2

      I don't know if that was a Greek or if it was a Greek living in a later date and living in Egypt. I forget his name and am a bit too lazy to look it up but if the person you're speaking of is the same one that I'm thinking of (the first to do such) he was also the person who made the first steam engine except he never made it work. He did things like make a coin operated holy water dispenser? If it's him then it's usually (wrongly) attributed to the Greeks and to the age where they were at their peak. He was an Alexandrian (not sure if by birth or not) and did much of his work in the temples there. The famous historical UK model maker has recreated some of his work including the device you seem to be referencing.

      (I just re-watched a documentary about him, specifically, a couple of months ago.)

      Oh - Heron. That was his name, as I recall. Heh... There's a whole documentary about him, at least I think it was entirely about him. He was, as I recall, from an age that's typically considered later than the age of the Greeks. He was in Alexandria, as I recall. Only a few of his writing survived the destruction of the famous library there. It was in the library, they believe, that he did much of his work and research which would have, of course, relied on the older Grecian works.

      I may be misremembering something but I'm pretty sure those are the main details. It's correct to say that he was Greek (as I recall) but not *really* correct to say that his work is attributed to the Ancient Greeks. This may be incorrect but I think his work was sometime in the 200 BCE range or newer? They may have even been in the 100 BCE area but, as said, I've not made a scholarly pursuit from this but simply seen him pop up in a bunch of documentaries over the years. Unfortunately, there's no good indexing of documentaries that would enable me to search the transcripts and find him and I'd probably be too lazy to do so considering that I've not even bothered to open Google for this comment but it would be awesome.

      --
      "So long and thanks for all the fish."
    18. Re:most things are older than previously thought. by Hognoxious · · Score: 2

      The Greeks were amazing thinkers.

      And then they ran into the Romans, who were pretty good doers.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    19. Re:most things are older than previously thought. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And then returned to them as "public services".

      It's all an elaborate scheme to take money from those who have it and give it to those who don't.

    20. Re:most things are older than previously thought. by Lodlaiden · · Score: 1

      This needs more points.

      --
      Suborbital [spaceflight] is the special olympics of spaceflight. - Rei
    21. Re:most things are older than previously thought. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's kind of interesting and I keep hearing it mentioned in the various documentaries as of late that your dick is unimaginably smaller than we'd previously believed. But I digress, so to speak.

    22. Re:most things are older than previously thought. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes, he might be little but he's cute. At least that's what your ex-girlfriend tells me. I must be honest, it was funnier when she wasn't your ex. Yes, that's why it had a "funny taste." I didn't use a condom.

    23. Re:most things are older than previously thought. by Spinalcold · · Score: 1

      I think it was Democritus, but it could be a different Greek, who said that there will always be slaves until we have automatons to do the boring, uninteresting and menial jobs. That without complex machines there will always be slaves. So they did think about it critically but didn't really see an alternative, or that alternative would only present itself when technology was advanced enough.

  2. Solidworks by AHuxley · · Score: 1

    Lets hope the Solidworks project gets more people thinking about and enjoying the maths.
    Thats a great after all the computerized tomography work that was done.

    --
    Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
  3. remember Plato and Thales by harvey+the+nerd · · Score: 2

    There are echoes of multiple catastrophes like "The Deluge" and Thera in legend. No telling what we will find when the archeology of the last 25,000 years is recovered from the flooded ice age shores in 300-400 ft of water. Thales awed warring Greeks to scamper away from battle in 585 BC with his showmanship about blotting out the sun, showing us he could predict total eclipse. Bits of math and astronomy might be precious surviving threads no telling how far back. Plato's claim of priests' families handing down secret history / legends across the millenia might not be total bs. Time immemorial indeed.

    1. Re:remember Plato and Thales by phantomfive · · Score: 1

      To be fair, Plato is closer to our day than he is to the beginning of written history.

      --
      "First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
    2. Re:remember Plato and Thales by geantvert · · Score: 1

      It is tempting to think that the flooded area contain traces of ancient advanced civilisations but more realistically, they are probably not very different from those found on solid ground. After all, the flooded areas only represent a few percent of the whole area occupied by humans at that time. Even assuming that the coastal regions were the more densely populated, it is difficult to imagine that an ancient advanced civilisation would not also have occupied some areas that are now inland.

  4. Grammar Narcisism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A few working reproductions have been produced and make it clear that whomever [sic] designed

    It needs to be whoever, the person is doing the designing and is thus the subject of the sentence.

    1. Re:Grammar Narcisism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      I don't think you titled what you meant...

      narcissism
      noun
      excessive interest in or admiration of oneself and one's physical appearance.

    2. Re:Grammar Narcisism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't think you titled what you meant...

      You are as wrong as you are dull.
      -- Your friendly Grammar Narcissist

    3. Re:Grammar Narcisism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Two totally wrong AC's in the one thread. Who'da thunk it? Grammar_Nazi

    4. Re:Grammar Narcisism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Grammar_Nazi

      And 'Grammar Narcissist' is rather obviously a wordplay on that very expression. Please!

      Two totally wrong AC's in the one thread. Who'da thunk it?

      Are you saying you are not the same half-wit who originally sought to correct me?

    5. Re:Grammar Narcisism by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't think you titled what you meant...

      I do beg your pardon, you are not as wrong as you are dull. I just noticed my typo. Clearly I meant to "title" 'Grammar Narcissism.'

  5. Made in Egypt? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    It was probably made in Egypt and was smuggled out by the Greek navy when the ship was sunk.

    1. Re:Made in Egypt? by hey! · · Score: 1

      Made in Egypt ... With technology they got from refugees from Atlantis, clearly.

      --
      Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
    2. Re:Made in Egypt? by gl4ss · · Score: 1

      it doesn't really matter where it was made when it was made probably during the time of the greek advancements.. all that area was connected by trade and culture in the time period.

      --
      world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
    3. Re:Made in Egypt? by OolimPhon · · Score: 2

      If that were so, why is the device engraved in Greek rather than Egyptian Hieroglyphics?

    4. Re:Made in Egypt? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It was engraved in Greek to hide the Egyption provenance. Remember, the Greeks stole the device, so logic dictates they would do whatever they could to hide their crimes.

    5. Re:Made in Egypt? by tehcyder · · Score: 1

      Made in Egypt ... With technology they got from refugees from Atlantis, clearly.

      And look what happened to Egypt after they let in all those refugees!

      Truly a warning from history.

      --
      To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
    6. Re:Made in Egypt? by mbone · · Score: 2

      Made in Egypt ... With technology they got from refugees from Atlantis, clearly.

      And look what happened to Egypt after they let in all those refugees!

      Yeah, they built the Pyramids.

    7. Re:Made in Egypt? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      BS. That timeline is all garbage and no respectable academic believes this.

      Go back to the Hisotry channel, n00b.
       

    8. Re:Made in Egypt? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Made in Egypt ... With technology they got from refugees from Atlantis, clearly.

      And look what happened to Egypt after they let in all those refugees!

      Yeah, they built the Pyramids.

      As slaves

    9. Re:Made in Egypt? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Made in Egypt ... With technology they got from refugees from Atlantis, clearly.

      And look what happened to Egypt after they let in all those refugees!

      Yeah, they built the Pyramids.

      As slaves

      ... and there is evidence that they were well cared for (e.g. mended bones, surgery, bones not showing signs of malnourishment) ...

  6. Secrets die with the creator by mveloso · · Score: 1

    This is one of the downsides to a craft-based technological society: when the creator dies knowledge goes with them.

    1. Re:Secrets die with the creator by scdeimos · · Score: 1

      As opposed to modern society: when the computers die knowledge goes with them.

      I don't envy the jobs of future historians 1,000 years from now trying to recover what happened in our day. Even if physical media survives that long (which it won't), how will they discern the methods required to read the information back? It's hard enough trying to recover data from 30 year old floppy disks given that you can't buy 40 TPI magnetic heads any more and 80 TPI magnetic heads often won't read the fatter tracks.

    2. Re:Secrets die with the creator by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      It's hard enough trying to recover data from 30 year old floppy disks given that you can't buy 40 TPI magnetic heads any more

      Yea, but anyone with a micro machine shop doesn't have much trouble making something as coarse as a 635 micron solenoid. It's no trouble at all for me to make a solenoid with a magnetic focus 1/10th that size, though I can't fabricate anything close to a state of the art hard disk drive or magnetic microscope.

      Besides, you can just remove the disc from the diskette and place it in a spinning magnetic microscope and make a much finer image of the domains, which gives you much more detail to identify what looks like damage and correct it. That is, you can make qualitative judgements on the raw media, which simply aren't possible with a binary dump of the media from the original drive, and are difficult to make with an analog dump from the original drive. Recovering data from magnetic media with the original equipment is pretty amateur hour in archival and forensic circles. For tape it's much better to use high resolution magnetic imaging combined with a non-contact aerostatic bearing, and for spinning disc media, a spinning magnetic microscope is the goto tool.

    3. Re: Secrets die with the creator by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Not-very-old media can be read, but magnetic storage degrades over time. Recovery techniques will likely be better in 1000 years (unless the reason they are looking at our stuff is to try to figure out what caused us to nearly destroy ourselves). Overall, though, I expect the century of B&W photography to be the best documented, by virtue of that technology's inherent stability.

    4. Re:Secrets die with the creator by AK+Marc · · Score: 1

      We can still read the first computer media, and any important media is replicated to modern media at convenient intervals.

      --
      Learn to love Alaska
    5. Re: Secrets die with the creator by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Oh, I didn't mean to imply that it didn't, just that you have a better chance of recovering whatever it was by getting a detailed image of the magnetic domains than simply dropping the disk/tape into a (hopefully expertly restored) compatible machine. If certain properties of the recording system are known, such as it using a certain run length code that is DC balanced, then when a value is present that violates the allowable symbols on the disk, then the magnetic (and hopefully an aligned optical) image of the surface can reveal which bits are likely corrupted, and make a manual restoration.

      The analogy to this is a printed manuscript, vs. a photocopy, vs. an OCR. If you have the OCR, then the only knowledge you have is that there was an error (or even less) in transcribing, if you can go back to the photocopy, which is analagous to an analog recording from the devices read head, then you can make a probalistic estimate as to which bit(s) were in error to result in the corrupted checksum, but the most definitive answer comes from a careful study of the original media magnetic and visible surface.

      For example, say you have a CRC error on an old zip file from a DOS format floppy: if you can go back to the original media, and see in the optical domain that there is a scratch across the surface, and register that against the magnetic domains on the disk, then you can make a probable guess that the bits that are corrupt are the ones under the scratch, and try flipping them until you get a correct CRC. If it is a CRC32, then there is a very low probability that flipping those bits in an incorrect manner results in a valid checksum, and so you can assume that the set of bit flips that results in a correct sum when you attempt to flip those that fall under the scratch (or hunk of mold, which should be delicately cleaned off too), is the correct original data. If you were just looking at a binary dump of the media, then you would have no information to guide your guess work, and if you were to flip bits entirely at random, there is a lower chance that you can recover the original data, and a low confidence that you made the right correction (though if it's ASCII/EBCDIC/etc text, it's quite easy to use common sense to recover sparse bit errors).

      Overall, though, I expect the century of B&W photography to be the best documented, by virtue of that technology's inherent stability.

      Of course. But I've also found laser printed documents appear to survive quite well, with the limit imposed by the paper rather than the toner. I imagine laser printing onto polymer sheets like OHP film would result in excellent longterm survivability for important documents. There are companies that will record data onto gold plates with electron beam or focused ion beam recording techniques, as long as the chain of custody is properly maintained, these artefacts would be reasonably assumed to survive a millenia and still be readable.

    6. Re:Secrets die with the creator by geantvert · · Score: 1

      Future historian may not be able to read our electronic forms of storage but they will have plenty of artefacts to study. A middle size landfill site from the 20th century is likely to produce more objects than 4000 years of ancient Egypt history.

      The fact that they won't be able to visualize your porn collection won't matter much for them.

           

    7. Re:Secrets die with the creator by myowntrueself · · Score: 1

      This is one of the downsides to a craft-based technological society: when the creator dies knowledge goes with them.

      I find it hard to believe that this artifact was developed by a single individual in isolation. It seems more like something that required a fair bit of history behind it, long term development of multiple threads by multiple individuals.

      Ie this seems like just one product of a civilization and the rest of this civilization is missing from the historical and archaeological record.

      --
      In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
    8. Re:Secrets die with the creator by Hognoxious · · Score: 2

      As opposed to modern society: when the computers die knowledge goes with them.

      My computers have information in them. The knowledge is in my head.

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
    9. Re:Secrets die with the creator by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      As opposed to modern society: when the computers die knowledge goes with them.

      I don't envy the jobs of future historians 1,000 years from now trying to recover what happened in our day.

      That's why I spend several hours each day preserving our culture by carving into stone tablets reproductions of the Imgur front page.

      --almitydave

      (AC to preserve mods)

  7. Greek legend about the Antikythera by Applehu+Akbar · · Score: 3, Funny

    It is said that a wealthy shipowner had the Mechanism built as a navigational aid but the captain of his flagship, incensed at the slow operation of Debian on it, hurled it into the Aegean.

    1. Re:Greek legend about the Antikythera by 0xdeaddead · · Score: 4, Funny

      something something systemd.

    2. Re:Greek legend about the Antikythera by theArtificial · · Score: 1

      Well done.

      --
      Man blir trött av att gå och göra ingenting.
    3. Re:Greek legend about the Antikythera by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      something something systemd.

      systemd-antikytherad is likely to be committed soon, there is still some arguments going on about how it is supposed to work.

    4. Re:Greek legend about the Antikythera by ld+a,b · · Score: 1

      Duh. He should've used NetBSD on it!

      --
      10 little-endian boys went out to dine, a big-endian carp ate one, and then there were -246.
  8. It's a defense mechanism... by sconeu · · Score: 1

    It's to defend against these guys...

    http://www.kythera.com/

    --
    General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
  9. Re:Grandma Nasser by edittard · · Score: 1

    Having been beaten to the punch on the main point, I will just point out that sometimes you should look more carefully before posting.

    --
    At the bottom of the /. main page it says 'Yesterday's News'. Well they got that right.
  10. Re:Antikythera Mechanism is for cows. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    My udder moistens with thoughts of you whipping me with your wit. My personal secret Stockholm syndrome fetish towards my herder. As I gaze up from the meadows, dazedly chewing my cud, I look at your leather cowboy hat with both a mix of horror and curiosity. In the fleeting moments of madness I wish I was a horse, if only you would mount me and ride me in the wind. With a huff, however, the melancholic reality of my own existence comes flooding back to this moment in time, dulled by my own senses. I dolefully wait for that moment you might grab my teats and forcefully place a suction cup upon them, if only to extract my milk in all its creamy goodness.

    Mooo my friend. Mooo, Mooo MOOOO! May you one day find the courage to drink straight from my breast, my bosom swells with misplaced gratitude for my own existence. Love Daisy. Xxooxxoox.

  11. Re: Antikythera Mechanism is for cows. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Suddenly, the cow troll seems worth it

  12. Re:Antikythera Mechanism is for cows. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Someone has actually made the cow thing entirely worth it. Thank you good sir and/or madam and/or Bessie.

  13. This was all covered by Nova a few years ago, with by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    The abstract here was so astoundingly poor that I didn't bother to read the article (this IS slashdot, of course).

    This device wasn't for "tracking the calendar"; any Greek who had the power of speech could "track the calendar". This device was for tracking the positions of celestial bodies to a great degree of accuracy. There is a strong suspicion that it was designed and/or built by Archinedes himself.

    After scanning this thing with all kinds of fancy technology, archaeologists are discovering that it is a masterpiece of science, technology, and engineering all rolled into one: it demonstrates a profound understanding of the movements of the (known) planets and the moon, and the ingenuity of designing and fabricating a device to literally "tell the future" (I.e. Predict eclipses) -- a device that would ultimately survive two thousand years in seawater.

    I can't believe this is being posted today, unless someone just wanted to remind the /. community of how absolutely wonderful this device really is. But no, it looks like someone just thought "oh, cool, an old calendar thing from Greece, maybe I'll post it". Sigh.

  14. Re:This was all covered by Nova a few years ago, w by myowntrueself · · Score: 1

    You don't just make one of these out of the blue then throw away the tech you developed.

    --
    In the free world the media isn't government run; the government is media run.
  15. Stupid... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Why is it that if it's not connected to an iPhone, we have this mentality that they were stupid?

    Genius and resourcefulness are not just inventions of the 20th century, people have been smart
    long before Bill and Steve came along. Geezzz!

    CAP === 'imprint'

  16. Re:This was all covered by Nova a few years ago, w by meerling · · Score: 1

    Though I find the assumption that the starting point of the device is the same as it's creation date a bit of a reach. It's not uncommon for someone making mechanical device to track something, use a known historical reference point to then gauge it's accuracy. If it can correctly calculate the stuff you already know, then you can have a reasonable expectation it will work for unknown events as well. On the other hand, if it fails to properly perform on past events, you know it will definitely be useless scrap.

  17. Re:Antikythera Mechanism is for cows. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    mod up pls

  18. Re:Antikythera Mechanism is for cows. by SpankiMonki · · Score: 1

    This may be the most interesting, informative, insightful, funny thing I've EVAR read on slashdot. And me without mod points.

  19. Re:This was all covered by Nova a few years ago, w by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Relevant Nova link:

    http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/ancient/ancient-computer.html

  20. Re:Antikythera Mechanism is for cows. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    What you say? No moo points?