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.

Comments

doesn't tell the future

[phantomfive]

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).

Re:doesn't tell the future

[jblues]

The text said: "Primum Scribe!" (first post), followed by "Moo dixit boves mooo" (moo say the cows moo). After that "Nescis quid dicis de te twat stupri" (you don't know what you're talking about you fucking twat) and (mostly unintelligible) words of a similar nature.

Obligatory

[Yvan256]

The World's Oldest Computer May Have Predicted the Future

...the 2,000 year-old-device ... wasn't programmable in the modern sense, but it's considered the world's first analog computer.

...it was a kind of philosopher's guide to the galaxy, and perhaps the world's oldest mechanical computer.

So... 42?

Of course it predicted the future.

[140Mandak262Jamuna]

It predicted the future like a calendar or an almanac predicted the future. Jun 15 of the next year is going to be Sunday" or "the next full moon day is going to be on Jul 22". If you consider this predicting the future, oh yeah, it did. It is the whole point of the machine.

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.