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The World's Oldest Computer May Have Predicted the Future (gizmodo.com)
Gizmodo reports: Discovered in an ancient shipwreck near Crete in 1901, the freakishly advanced Antikythera Mechanism has been called the world's first computer. A decades-long investigation into the 2,000 year-old-device is shedding new light onto this mysterious device... It wasn't programmable in the modern sense, but it's considered the world's first analog computer.
schwit1 shares a report from the Associated Press:: For over a century since its discovery in an ancient shipwreck, the exact function of the Antikythera Mechanism -- named after the southern Greek island off which it was found -- was a tantalizing puzzle.... After more than a decade's efforts using cutting-edge scanning equipment, an international team of scientists has now read about 3,500 characters of explanatory text -- a quarter of the original -- in the innards of the 2,100-year-old remains. They say it was a kind of philosopher's guide to the galaxy, and perhaps the world's oldest mechanical computer.
schwit1 shares a report from the Associated Press:: For over a century since its discovery in an ancient shipwreck, the exact function of the Antikythera Mechanism -- named after the southern Greek island off which it was found -- was a tantalizing puzzle.... After more than a decade's efforts using cutting-edge scanning equipment, an international team of scientists has now read about 3,500 characters of explanatory text -- a quarter of the original -- in the innards of the 2,100-year-old remains. They say it was a kind of philosopher's guide to the galaxy, and perhaps the world's oldest mechanical computer.
Remember the successes! Forget all the failures!
It's kind of pointless to write an article about an ancient Greek text that was found if you don't report what the text actually said.
Bonus points if you present a translation of the text, which neither article linked to actually does. (Most likely because the researchers aren't sure what the text actually says).
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
So what future did it predict, according to your click bait title?
The how come they didn't know their boat was gonna sink??
It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future.
the growth in cynicism and rebellion has not been without cause
Philosophers in this time were astrologers and mystics who made stuff up about the positions of stars and then used that to make more things up about what is meant to humanity. At best this device was probably a machine for accurately calculating the information for others. (ie. it's analog because this stuff doesn't change) I think it's silly to say that 2100 years ago we lacked the complexity to build this. We built the pyramids what? 4000 years ago? None of this is cutting edge stuff and it's hyperbole to assume it's anything more then the creation of the ancient world equivalent of Nicola Tesla.
So... 42?
Not even a few actual words? This is the archetypal shitpost.
Probably made by Archimedes to tell horoscope or for alchemy.
The fragment says, "...in 2100 years, an Oompa Loompa with strangely tiny fingers will attempt to rise to power. Beware, since he has the mark of the Beast on his forehead, which you can't see because he's got this weird thing going on with his hair. His wife will be a nice piece of Slovenian ass though, so big ups for that."
You are welcome on my lawn.
This is a machine that simulated the movement of the planets and the moon using gears. The whole idea of this machine is to predict the phases of the moon and the location of the planets in the coming days.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
So can an abacus if you use it to do the calculation of when the sun will rise and since the abacus is 500 years older than this device surely it is the first analog computer which can predict the future.
and unless this computer predicted the rise of low-traffic clickbait, im not interested.
Good people go to bed earlier.
"Sensationalist clickbait article devoid of any useful details shit directly from editor's ass.
Go look it up on YouTube, btw. There is a wonderful Nova special about it there, and how multiple geniuses and two mobile versions of fantastically advanced scanners were created and shipped to it, rather than the other way around, due to its fragility.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
This is clearly impossible. Egyptologists tell us that machines did not exist when the Pyramids and sculptures were created. Point being: Egyptology is wrong, and archeology is politicized to keep findings from undermining a country's sovereignty. (Eg: China did not emerge in isolation, hence the pyramids and mummies with European DNA).
The Chinese, Egyptian, Sumerian, Machu Picchu, legends all tell of a more technologically advanced race of Sun Gods who built their temples and gave them the gift of agriculture and city building. These sun gods are described as having European features, such as fair skin, red or blond hair, green or blue eyes and thin aquiline noses. This hints that a more advanced civilization capable of sea faring that existed prior to the end of the last ice age.
It's stupid as hell to assume the Antikythera Mechanism is the world's first analog computer. The creator certainly built prior models and there were probably many many other similar devices and other sorts of machines with the same or higher complexity. There are Egyptian artifacts which appear to be huge gears and drilling heads. You're a damned fool believing in "the ancients had no machines" propaganda. If you seriously think a single device was created with such a tech level and no prior devices existed using similar tech of equal or lesser mechanical complexity, you're a fucking idiot. Even basic Anthropology would suggest the device is a product of a culmination of existing technologies for this one purpose, and that other machines with other purposes led up to its creation, and most likely other machines existed beyond its capabilities. The chances that you just happened to find the single device that is the pinnacle of the ancient civilization's technological level is nigh on impossible, and anyone suggesting thus should be laughed at and mocked as morons, not fit to give archaeological interpretations. It would be like an alien civilization discovering one of our iPhones and proclaiming it was this planet's first communication device.
Deep Thought
The World's Oldest Computer May Have Predicted the Future
Y'know, it would be nice the summary even remotely hinted at how this thing "predicted in the future."
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
I watched a doc on this recently. It was kind of like an astronomical calendar, designed to follow the rotation of the planets. It also had a dial that told you what island the 'games' (early sporting competitions) were on and how close it was!
If it's the one where a there's a guy who makes a cog with X[1] teeth by going "... yeah, well, Y is easy, so you just sort of space them apart a bit" and goes on to make one using a chisel it's one of the best documentaries I've ever seen.
[1] Where X is a prime number and Y is a nearby very unprime number.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
So you slag Trump by degrading comments about his appearance and sexually objectifying his wife?
Once again the hypocrisy is staggering, and invisible to all you ignoramuses.
Hillary for Prison. 2016
Without such a mechanism, astrological calculations were done by intelligent, educated people, white-collar workers so to speak. If machines like this took over this kind of work, such artificial intelligence would have probably destroyed the economy. Or maybe that theory has been proven wrong over the last several thousand years of machines becoming more sophisticated all the time.
nt
Nothing so advanced could have been the "first" thing of its kind. Think about it. If I told you to make a bronze wheel 140mm in diameter with 233 perfectly spaced teeth, would you know how to do it? With tools that were available in 200 BC Greece?
No there is must have been an at least decades-old tradition of instrument-making leading up to the design and execution of the Antikythera Mechanism, stuff like armillary spheres and quadrants and such. At some point they must have made simpler instruments that maybe could use wheels coupled by friction, and from there the very notion of toothed gears (which we take for granted) could be invented.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
It would predict future celestial events. Full moons, solar and lunar eclipses, conjunctions of planets.
All of those were important in planning dates for celebrations and international conpetitions. Imagine all the arguments this would avoid if everyone had the same algorithm and calculator. No-one could accuse the other of setting the date to give themselves an advantage.
This is clearly impossible. Egyptologists tell us that machines did not exist when the Pyramids and sculptures were created.
This was created 2000 years ago, the pyramids were created a couple of thousand years before that. This device in no way contradicts what you say Egyptologists tell us.
The rest of you post is a load of speculative drivel.
No way...
It's an astronomical clock. It charted the movements of the moon and planets and predicted eclipses.
Calling it a "computer" is a bit of a stretch.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
I'm sure a patent troll is filing papers in the eastern district of Texas as I type this.
When this show was on PBS a retired mechanical engineer created one of the cogs for the machine in about 5 minutes with hand tools. He also had a model of the machine already built.
The astronomical knowledge and mathematics that went into the machine are FAR more impressive than the mechanism itself.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Post of the day.
I'd mod you up if at least one of your links wasn't to youtube.
227-3517
Clearly it was brought and left by aliens... I'm pretty sure The History Channel told me so, and you know, it's The History Channel, they're like TOTALLY about being accurate n' stuff...
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
> destroys too many people's jobs in the name of corporate profits (i.e., the rich getting richer) and/or causes people to be dumber and less skilled in their own survival, then it's not a Good Thing at all.
It was feared that if machines did the math, we'd all become "dumber", unable to do math because the machines would do it. Before that, scribes lost their jobs to the printing press. We'll see indeed, just as we have been seeing for the last thousand years or so.
Well worth watching :
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Q124C7W0WYA
It was not a clock, because it had no timekeeping mechanism, no balance wheel or spring or pendulum.
You would set the date and time desired, and it would show the positions of objects in the sky. Lots of objects!
It is a specialized computer with "program in masked rom", not generalized. You could call it a calculator, but it is considerebly more complex than that.