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Understanding the Antikythera Mechanism (hackaday.com)
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.
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.
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.