Antikythera Mechanism

**TinCow** · 07-31-2008, 12:01

There has been an interesting development on this thing:

A 2,100-year-old "computer" found in a Roman shipwreck may have acted as a calendar for the Olympic Games, scientists report in Nature journal.

The Antikythera Mechanism has puzzled experts since its discovery by Greek sponge divers in 1901.

Researchers have long suspected the ancient clockwork device was used to display astronomical cycles.

A team has now found that one of the dials records the dates of the ancient Olympiad.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7533457.stm

Looks like it might be a sports calender.

**Whacker** · 07-31-2008, 21:23

Ugh. I hate sports, but I love history. What should I think about this?

Didn't someone create a near-exact working replica of this based off of radio and cat scans of the innards?

**rotorgun** · 08-02-2008, 04:58

It is fascinating that such a device was found on the seabed. It makes me wonder if it might have been aboard a ship that sank, or was it discarded from a vessel at sea? It could be an example of the world's earliest mechanical chronometer, one that might have been used for calculate a ship's position at sea.

I've seen a program about this wonderful discovery last year, but the identification of writings on the dials was as yet not accomplished. Let us hope for more information to enlighten us further. This is stupendous!

**The General** · 08-03-2008, 08:55

Originally Posted by Whacker

Ugh. I hate sports

Pfft, strange people.

On a related note (on-topic-wise), a ScienceDaily article on the Antikythera Mechanism.

**keravnos** · 08-03-2008, 11:43

Originally Posted by TinCow

There has been an interesting development on this thing:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7533457.stm

Looks like it might be a sports calender.

Ancient Greeks' universal time was the Olympiads, as each city had its own rulers/archons by which it counted time. This makes me think that this device had many uses. One was to find the actual geographical width, the other to navigate by sun or stars (like the ancients would) only to do so without the sun being on the air. The final use of this mechanism would be to count time accurately, by knowing exactly how many months, days and years ahead lay the olympiad. This makes even more sense once you know that the diary of the ancients was flawed, aka they had to add in some months every few years (as the year for most of the calendars we know of was around 354 days long).

This makes this device a lot more extraordinary than has been previously thought.